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MacDowell
@macdowell1907

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“I have never worked with such intensity, sense of purpose, and with so much support as I did during my residency,” poet Robyn Schiff wrote after her winter 2021 #MacDowellResidency, when she was working on her new book-length poem, INFORMATION DESK: An Epic. “Because of Covid restrictions, residencies during this period were by necessity more private. I am grateful that I was able to turn that solitude into an extraordinary period of artistic discovery. In turn, the few social interactions with staff and other residents were that much more charged and immediate. The bountiful amount of time I had to myself allowed me to luxuriate simultaneously in the play that poetry demands, as well as a serious deepening. As a parent, especially during this period, this kind of focus is extraordinary. The notion of taking a long clarifying walk and then enjoying the privilege of returning to my desk, uninterrupted, is impossible to imagine outside of these circumstances! I was able to do both the soul-work and the desk-work that poetry requires while in residence, meandering in mind, on the beautiful trails, and on the page, and this brought my writing to a new place of reckoning.” #MadeAtMacDowell INFORMATION DESK, which is now out with @penguinbooks, is about Robyn’s five years working on and off at said desk at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and records her everyday interactions with museum visitors of all walks of life. Poet and MacDowell Fellow @cathyparkhong (7x 03-18) called the book is “ecstatic, propulsive, and novelistic” in her blurb, “a tour-de-force epic on the intricate structures of knowledge, aesthetics, and labor. Astonishingly sibylline with her syllabic constraints, Schiff is one of our most formally brilliant poets writing in American letters today.” #RobynSchiff is pictured in the first image in MacDowell’s #HeywardStudio in February 2021. She holds a piece of paper torn from an envelope, upon which is written the Virginia Woolf quote, "Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us." (Photo by @josiesphoto.) Swipe through to see the cover of INFORMATION DESK. #MacDowellFellow