POETRY

The Bookbinder's Wife
And More Poems from the North End

by Judith Robbins

Judith Robbins’ poems run the length and breadth of the seasons, the natural world and life as we know it. Through the lenses of everyday routine, the distances of childhood, and the expanses of making and reading poetry from Dante to Mary Oliver, we get in these verses penetrating reflections of wonder, anger, joy, regret, faith and doubt, hope and discouragement, resentment and love—records of a well-examined life.
                 —Dana Wilde, author of the “Off Radar” reviews column for the                                          Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel newspapers
 
 
Judith Robbins’ second book of poetry, The Bookbinder’s Wife, continues a legacy she began with The North End. The luminescence of her poems grows from the dirt, the paint, the charred logs that mark the season with scars. She is gently ruthless in getting to the heart of what matters, whether that is the succulence of blackberries, the graceful hands of her husband, or the innocence of middle age. Moving through her poems, you move through seasons of both weather and the heart; from the gray onset of winter to the welcome unbending of frozen limbs in spring. It seems obvious to state that a sense of place is clear when you feel the cold and the warmth of her writing space. What comes later is the sense of being that Robbins’ poems bring. That is why I read them and reread them.
                   —Careyleah MacLeod, LCSW, psychotherapist
 
 
Robbins’ latest collection of lyrics digs deep with a light touch to celebrate the incandescent truths in the everyday life of child, wife, and mother.
                      —Richard F. Whalen, author of Shakespeare: Who Was He? and                                         Truro, the Story of a Cape Cod Town
 

 PicturePhoto by Cyndi Brinkler


   Judith Robbins grew up in the North End of Worcester, Mass., in a neighborhood she celebrated in her first collection of poems: The North End, published by North Country Press; but for the last 50 years, she has called rural Maine home.
      After raising four children, she returned to college and earned a degree in women’s studies with a focus on religion. She took a course in preaching at Harvard Divinity School when she was working on a master’s degree in theological studies. The experience of that class led to invitations to preach when she returned to Maine, and those assignments eventually led to a stint as assistant chaplain at Bates College before accepting a position as pastor of a community church in Newcastle, from which she is retired.
     Judith can be found most days in her writing house, when the temperature is above zero.