Judith Roitman's Poetry page


I write what is sometimes called experimental poetry, although it never seems particularly experimental to me.But I am somewhat obsessed about the subtle relationships / disjunctions among language, world, and mind, which seems to be a common thread of much (although not all) experimental writing. I tend to write from rather than about.

If this makes sense to you, or if it doesn't but still seems intriguing, you might want to check out the Electronic Poetry Center from the University of Buffalo. Let me also suggest a short list of books to read: Kenneth Irby's Call Steps, Robert Kelly's The Flowers of Unceasing Coincidence, Leslie Scalapino's Way, Beverly Dahlen's A Reading 1-7 (or any other in that series), Clark Coolidge's The Crystal Text, Susan Howe's Singularities, anything by Larry Eigner, and Maryrose Larkin's The Book of Ocean. Two critical works that have very accessible chapters on experimental poetry are Rachel Blau du Plessis' The Pink Guitar, and Marjorie Perloff's Poetic License.



Most recently, my poetry has appeared in First Intensity, Spectaculum, Black Spring, Bird Dog, Locus Point (online), and 31 (an unbound chapbook anthology). A chapbook, The stress of meaning: variations on a line of Susan Howe, was published in 1997 by Standing Stones Press, a second chapbook, Diamond Notebooks, was published in 1998 by nominative press collective, and a third chapbook, Slippage, was published in 1999 by Potes and Poets Press. A book No Face: Selected and New was published in 2008 by First Intensity Press. A chapbook (actually, a bunch of unbound cards) Ku: a thumb book is forthcoming from Crane's Bill Books. Some of my poems can be found online at Locus Point and at the Kansas Poets web site.


A life between horizontal lines: what kind of life is that?