Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet and essayist. Born in Toronto in
1961, she was a longtime resident of Vancouver, where in the early
90s she began writing, publishing and collaborating in a community
of artists and poets that included Artspeak Gallery and The
Kootenay School of Writing. She has continued these activities for
30 years, publishing books, leaflets and posters, translating
poetry and linguistics from French, lecturing and teaching
internationally, and continuing her ongoing study into the
political constitution of lyric voice. In 2017 she was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate in Letters by Emily Carr University of Art and
Design, and in 2018, the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts in NY
awarded her the inaugural CD Wright Award in Poetry. She has taught
at Cambridge University, Princeton, UC Berkeley, California College
of the Arts, Piet Zwart Institute, Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics and American University of Paris, as well as
holding research and residency positions at institutions across
Canada, the US, and Europe. Lisa currently lives in
France.
Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet and essayist. Born in Toronto in
1961, she was a longtime resident of Vancouver, where in the early
90s she began writing, publishing and collaborating in a community
of artists and poets that included Artspeak Gallery and The
Kootenay School of Writing. She has continued these activities for
30 years, publishing books, leaflets and posters, translating
poetry and linguistics from French, lecturing and teaching
internationally, and continuing her ongoing study into the
political constitution of lyric voice. In 2017 she was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate in Letters by Emily Carr University of Art and
Design, and in 2018, the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts in NY
awarded her the inaugural CD Wright Award in Poetry. She has taught
at Cambridge University, Princeton, UC Berkeley, California College
of the Arts, Piet Zwart Institute, Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics and American University of Paris, as well as
holding research and residency positions at institutions across
Canada, the US, and Europe. Lisa currently lives in France.
"And perhaps that's what Robertson, with this demanding, erudite,
and quite remarkable novel, is telling us is required to return
those who have been expunged from the pages of literature: time and
effort." – Stephen Finucan, Quill & Quire"Robertson’s work
offers a philosophical defence of the girl, a celebration of the
menopausal dandy, a speculative release from the constraints of
gender, and a portrait of reading as drifting." – Andrea
Brady, London Review of Books
"Things happen in the novel but none so much as the sentences
themselves, they are the events; each sentence invites mediation,
pause, excitement." – Allison Grimaldi Donahue, BOMB
Magazine"It’s brilliant, strange, and unlike anything I’ve read
before." – Rebecca Hussey, BOOKRIOT"A difficult work of ideas,
by turns enlightening and arcane, part autobiographical narrative,
part literary theory, Robertson’s debut novel, for those interested
in possibilities of fiction, is not to be missed."
– Publishers Weekly"Robertson, with feminist wit, a dash of
kink, and a generous brain, has written an urtext that tenders
there can be, in fact, or in fiction, no such thing. Hers is a boon
for readers and writers, now and in the future." – Jennifer
Krasinski, Bookforum"A new Lisa Robertson book is both a
public event and a private kind of bacchanal." – Los Angeles
Review of Books"An intense if abstract portrait of the poet as a
young woman in search of a kind of language that might lead to
liberation." – The Kirkus Reviews"As far as I’m concerned,
it’s already a classic." – Anne Boyer"Often reading a novel,
even a good novel, feels like falling into a well-worn groove.
There can be comfort in that. This is a different thing entirely.
Ironic for a book that works by repetition: The Baudelaire Fractal
is a novel you haven’t read before." – The Globe and
Mail"Robertson, one of Canada’s best and most innovative authors,
thus cleaves close to Baudelaire’s own dictum: "Always be a poet,
even in prose." – Winnipeg Free Press"The Baudelaire Fractal
is a book readers—certainly this reader—will continue returning to
for its hypnotic narrative architecture, its portrayal of female
ambition and courage, and its inner flint of artistic permission."
– The Puritan"The fabric of The Baudelaire Fractal—and it is
most definitely a fabric, not just text but textile—is no less
yours because it was thrifted. Learn to live in it. You won’t
regret it, despite the lingering scent of shed self."
– Newfound"The overall effect is an augmented complexity,
unrelated to progress, expansion or growth, in our understanding of
artistic lineage, history and subjectivity itself." – MAP
Magazine"The Baudelaire Fractal doesn’t resemble a novel in most of
its traditional senses, though the classification doesn’t really
matter. Robertson bends the form to her will, and the result is
captivating even as it tends towards abstraction." – Entropy
Magazine"A semi-autobiographical novel that blends elements of
fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism, The Baudelaire Fractal
explores what it means to be an author and a figure of authority,
as well as how the Western literary canon and preconceptions about
gender can limit who is recognized as a writer by society at
large." – PRISM International"This is a novel that, though its
means are singular, will open and salvage possible worlds—above
all, for writers, who perhaps will one day look back at their
younger selves with an air of indulgence and find they were reading
Lisa Robertson." – Music & Literature"I want to spend many
hours tracing the rapture of this book, as well as its seductions."
– Spam Zine"Everything becomes a form of writing, a code. Like
the dispersed 'I' of the 'girl,' writing itself is both absent and
multiplex, 'lost and grotesquely multiple'." – Cleveland
Review of Books "Above all, however, this book is
governed by a poetic. The more you pursue it, the more you will
find it to be unreadable, which is to say inexhaustible."
– The Capilano Review
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