Iain James Robb

About Me

I'm at the moment not doing much with my life (frustrating; I'm a man of perfectly reasonable ambition, who merely wants to meet girls and have some money to buy films and books with, and good food). I spend my days reading and watching movies, and preparing when I have money for my rare nights out.

I've recently had a few poems of mine accepted in an anthology, but I'm not sure when it's being issued. After that, it may make it easier to get my stuff accepted in magazines, but I have actually written several currently unpublished books.

Owing to my surface style, my poetry is usually misunderstood. I'm not a conservative, like most neo-formalists. I don't believe metric poetry should ideally be a series of identical stresses in metre a five year old could write. I distrust most modern vers libre also, which is just badly line broken prose which cannot in my opinion be labelled poetry. Whether metre or free verse (and both ideally have more in common than people think) the only constant technically of good poetry is that it is allowed to sing. So It always has to be musical; and also it has to have genuine meaning instead of being just a slew of random thoughts and images, and it has to actually think and feel.

My work has been featured online on 'Cosmoetica', 'Monsters and Critics' and 'Laura Hird.com'. My first few poems printed will be issued by 'New Voices Press'.

Note: Since originally writing out this profile I have had my work accepted in three books by New Voices Press. Small press, and I've not been paid yet, but there you go. I'm also writing a book of libertrarian social theory, at work on the first volume of a low fantasy/sci-fi series, and revising a poetry book (my last one written) that I plan to issue as an E-book very soon.

Why do you write?

I write because I have to. Apart from visual art, it's the one thing I'm good at. I don't really analyse where my inspiration comes from, as I simply wait around after coming up with metric schemes for images, lines, and themes to pop into my head to match them: and I'm often unaware that I've found anything to really work with until it conglomerates in my head after the inception of ideas.

My acoustics have leaned more towards sprung metre or the exploitation of accentual free verse techniques since writing the paragraph above.

Any favorite authors? Books?

My reading tastes are totally omnivorous, just so long as what I'm reading is well written. I currently read a fair amount of sci-fi stuff, but my reading habits change from year to year. I don't really read much poetry now, but my favourite poets are too numerous to mention: and I'd rather not list the principal ones, in case they are cited unduly as influences. I'd like to think that I'm original, but of course you have to allow yourself, no matter what your individual talent, to unconsciously or consciously adopt facets of other people's styles.