Robin Blackburn McBride is the author of four books, including a novel, The Shining Fragments, and a volume of poetry, In Green, both published by Guernica Editions. Her short stories and poems have appeared in a variety of North American literary magazines. Robin’s poetry has also been selected for two anthologies, most recently, Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine (Caitlin Press). Her next novel, River of Dreams (Guernica), is forthcoming in 2026.
You can read She Was Quiet That Night in the April 2025 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
I wrote this piece in response to Michael Ondaatje’s “Sweet Like a Crow,” a list poem using multiple similes. Inspired by Ondaatje’s lavish, satirical romp through grating comparisons, as a feminist poet, I focused my pastiche on the effects of a one-sided conversation. The man who does all the talking while the woman is silent.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
When tackling any subject, even a dark one, writing poetry allows me to dive into the unconscious and see what emerges. The somehow-relevant absurdities and strange metonymies. It’s a form of expression like no other.
To convey the central idea of “She Was Quiet That Night” using a longer prose form might become monotonous and painful instead of (I hope) darkly comic. Some things are best contained in short bursts.
How do you revise your work?
When drafting poetry, I’m not always sure of what I’m writing about until I see what’s come through. I may start with an idea that I think I’m focusing on, only to have the whole piece change course. For me, that’s part of the joy of working in this form—the way a poem reveals itself. Then the revision process begins, and with it, the cutting away of everything that doesn’t serve the poem.
Knowing what to cut involves reading not just for meaning, but for sound. If a piece doesn’t have the right rhythms, it doesn’t work. When I’m revising, I’m often reading at a whisper, so I can listen.
It’s important to me that I share my drafts with a fellow poet and editor. When I was writing this piece, although I had most of it in place and knew the last two words, for a while, I’d been struggling to find the final simile. Sharing “She Was Quiet That Night” with one of my teachers, poet Judyth Hill, helped me to recognize the beats that were necessary at the end. Looking back, I realize that those last “masculine stresses” helped me to receive the final image. With the rhythm in place, the idea of the chained dog rushed into my awareness, bringing with it an unexpected sense of pathos.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
In the process of writing poetry, there are many levels of success and achievement. First, simply drafting a piece that feels like it has the potential to be a poem is an achievement. That experience can leave me exhilarated for a whole day. Typing the draft that I’ve written freehand in my journal is the next phase of achievement. Now, the first print version of a new poem “exists.” After living with a piece for days, weeks, or months—sometimes even years—getting to the point where I call it “finished” is a whole other phase of achievement. It means I can send it to literary magazines or publish it on my blog, Awakening Wonder. Either way, the thought of the poem finding a readership makes me glad and relieved, adding to a sense of creative success.
With enough finished poems, comes the potential for a next book. And that thought makes me happy, too.
What are you working on now?
As a poet and fiction author, I’m at work on projects in both forms. While waiting for my second novel, River of Dreams, to be published by Guernica Editions in 2026, I’m in the wonderfully messy and semi-ethereal stage of receiving ideas for my next novel. But I’m also at work on my second book of poetry.
When Guernica published my first collection of poems, In Green, back in 2002, I was in my thirties. Now, I bring new awareness and fresh imaginings to my writing. In the collection that I’m envisioning, the poems’ various female speakers convey a range of life experiences from many stages of the journey.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
Oh, yes. I’ve always been of the view that art is one. Sometimes visuals start me off—paintings, and photographs, and cards. I love tarot and oracle cards. I love collages and mandalas. Sometimes I write to music. Sometimes I dance before I write, sometimes after.
Writing fiction informs my poetry, too—in so far as it prompts me, periodically, to pull out of it for a while and find renewal in a poem’s wild depths. When a piece is strong enough, I put it out there—but every act of writing poetry, regardless of whether or not it yields a finished product, has intrinsic value. It keeps me limber and in the flow.
As a fiction writer, I’m bound to my central character’s point of view and world, and to the architecture of that character’s story. Poetry gives me a release from that. It’s liberating. At least, that’s what I tell myself until the work takes over. Then I remember that poetry has its own exacting challenges, and writing anything half decent is rarely, if ever, easy.