The Peter Robinson Archive: Recollections, Tributes, Explorations — edited with a Foreword by Katherine Meehan and Vic Pickup
Over the past half century and more the poet, translator, literary critic and occasional novelist Peter Robinson, born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1953, has established a reputation for the quality and distinctiveness of his writing, and of his work as a teacher and editor. In all these activities, he has been, and remains, focused on celebrating the necessity of poetry and the poetic imagination to an internationally vital culture. In this illustrated anthology, published to mark the opening of his archive at University of Reading Special Collections, contributions by fellow writers, colleagues, friends, and students shine a many-angled light on his writing life and work.
Katherine Meehan and Victoria Pickup, hosts of the Reading Poets’ Café, have brought together fifteen essays and an interview exploring aspects of Peter’s writing through this large and various archival collection. Into these have been woven poems and prose of recollection, alongside tributes to his lasting influence on students, readers, and other writers across four continents.
Paperback, 200 x 200 mm, 192 pages, 6 November 2026.
List of contributors: Roberta Antognini; Nour Bahgat; Kate Behrens; Adrian Blamires; Ian Brinton; Conor Carville; Adam Clarke-Williams; Nick Cooke; Kelvin Corcoran; Maisie Crittenden; W.J. Davies; Martine De Clercq; Pietro De Marchi; Martin Dodsworth; Maura Dooley; Tim Dooley; Claire Dyer; James Harpur; Kitty Hawkins; Andrew Houwen; Miki Iwata; Andrew Jamison; Peter Makin; Steven Matthews; John Matthias; Sharon Maxwell; Alastair Morgan; James Peake; Piers Pennington; Tom Phillips; Adam Piette; Jenny Polak; Adrian Poole; Elaine Randall; Ian Sansom; Anna Saroldi; Alex Saynor; Julian Stannard; Peter Swaab; Paul Vlitos.
Contents:
- Foreword, Katherine Meehan and Vic Pickup
- The Creator, the Researcher, and the Archivist: Collaborative Cataloguing of The Peter Robinson Archive, Sharon Maxwell
- Going Out to Return, Kelvin Corcoran
- ‘Dear Peter… there is a poet here’: Cataloguing the Letters, Claire Dyer
- Livre de Poche, Adam Clarke-Williams
- Dr Robinson, Martin Dodsworth
- Empson in Oxford, Tim Dooley
- A Small History of ‘A Short History’, Piers Pennington
- Actualities, Steven Matthews
- Voices Echoing in the Dark: The Past Lies Beneath Us, Ian Brinton
- What We Remember, Elaine Randell
- Peter Robinson’s Epigraphs: Sociability and Indebtedness, Peter Swaab
- Associational Poem for Peter Robinson, John Matthias
- On ‘Animal Sendai’, Alastair Morgan
- ‘The Badminton Game’, James Harpur
- Terms of Address: Places and People in Peter Robinson’s Sendai Poems, Paul Vlitos
- After Jeff Wall’s After ‘Spring Snow’, Conor Carville
- ‘Return to Sendai’ and the Perseverance of Grass, Miki Iwata
- Lost in the Old Romance, Kate Behrens
- On ‘Leaving Sapporo’ and ‘After Bansui’, Nick Cooke
- Haiku Quatrains, Adrian Blamires
- ‘What Have You’, Adrian Poole
- Edo-Venezia, Julian Stannard
- ‘Invisible Postmen’: The Processes of Peter Robinson and Horikawa Fumiko’s Ibaragi Noriko Translations, Andrew Houwen
- To the Dutch Italianists/Aux italianisants hollandaise, Peter Robinson/ trans. Martine De Clercq
- The Conversations, Maura Dooley
- More Italian than Ever: Peter Robinson’s Poetry in the 2020s, Anna Saroldi
- Enigmas of Presence, Alex Saynor
- Archival Reclamations of the Past: Peter Robinson’s ‘Recovered Memory’, Adam Piette
- A Friendship in Translation, Roberta Antognini
- Come un Lampo/Like a Lightning Flash, Pietro De Marchi/ trans. Peter Robinson and Ornella Trevisan
- Foreign Everywhere: Peter Robinson and Translation, Tom Phillips
- A Pair for Peter Robinson, Peter Makin
- Zamalek to Edith Morley: On Being Taught by Peter Robinson, Nour Bahgat
- Arriving at Night, James Peake
- A Way of Life, Andrew Jamison
- Closure Farewell, Maisie Crittenden
- Artworks from a Projected Collaboration, Jenny Polak and Peter Robinson
- When Change Comes, Greet It, Kitty Hawkins
- Well Done You, Ian Sansom
- ‘My Paper Trail’ | W. J. Davies Talks to Peter Robinson
- Notes on Contributors