DUKE CENTER — Authors are naturally excited when their first book is published.
One can only imagine how elated local and prolific author Bill Robertson is feeling now with the publishing of his 40th book, “Lost,” the second collection of all his horror and science fiction poems that have been published worldwide, including in European magazines.
In reaching this milestone in Robertson’s writing career, only 40 copies of “Lost” have been printed. They are available at Main Street Mercantile and On the Side Bookstore, both in Bradford, and The Paper Factory in Olean, N.Y.
“I didn’t want to put all of these poems in one huge collection because people would have a hard time wading through that,” Robertson said. “So, I figured I would break it up into two collections and add a lot more photographs to bring the poems to life.”
Robertson explained that his eerie pictures throughout “Lost” came from local cemeteries from McKean and Potter counties in Pennsylvania and Cattaraugus County in New York, and the stones and markers were inspirations for this book.
Robertson said, “I like to visit graveyards because there’s a lot of history there and also some old statues and angel sculptures add a lot of atmosphere to the books.”
“Lost” is actually broken into sections. Each one is introduced with one of Robertson’s photographs, and all poems there are related. There are sections of medieval, science fiction, eerie romantic and even humorous horror poems. “There is a big variety, and that’s what I was shooting for,” Robertson said. “There are a lot more short poems in this particular volume because I wanted to add more photos, because they really bring the poems to life and add an extra element and appeal to readers.”
Robertson’s latest work spans almost four decades of his writing and comes from all periods of his output. His writing style is varied, ranging from the familiar rhymed verse to free verse, which is characterized by unrhymed verse without a metrical pattern.
For instance, “Three Mile,” which Robertson wrote while an English major at Mansfield University, is an example of rhymed verse. This selection, based on the Three Mile Valley just up the creek from the Kinzua Bridge where at one time Robertson hunted deer, recalls the old farms there from long ago — now all that’s left are some apple trees — and a mill dam across the creek, as well as Robertson finding the remains of an old crosscut found along the creek that his father allowed him to take home.
Some of the vampire poems reflect free verse, a more modern style.
Robertson said that the avant-garde poet and critic E. E. Cummings, known as e e cummings since he rejected the established rules of capitalization and punctuation, also influenced his writing.
The poem, “Life Cycle,” reflects this persuasion.
It reads: she did not return
his advances
she did not return
his advances
she did not return
his advances
she did not return
Robertson said, “Poetry has played a big role in my life.” As a shy boy growing up in Bradford’s Bolivar Drive area, he found he could express his feelings more completely through poems. “Poems were my first writings,” he continued. “In high school, I’d entertain my friends with humorous poems to get a laugh.”
It was through poetry that Robertson became published in international magazines. “Many magazines use poems as filler since they don’t require much space. There is a better chance of having a poem accepted as opposed to a 20-page story,” he stated.
Early in his writing career, Robertson learned two important lessons: only about 20 percent of general interest poems actually get published, but 80 percent of horror poems are accepted for publication. “Europeans like to be scared, more so than Americans,” he noted.
Robertson has two copies of his original book, “Burial Grounds,” that contains much experimental poetry he wrote during his college days. Characterized as a chat book, which is basically folded paper — his name and title don’t even appear on the cover — this volume contains samples of free verse, rhyme verse and even shaped verse, where the shape of the lines takes the outline of the poem’s topic or subject, such as a cat, bird or house. Instead of the traditional paragraphs, the lines can be in zig-zag form to show the particular shape.
His second book, “Gardezau Froid,” translated from the French as “Keep Refrigerated,” shows an old-fashioned refrigerator that required defrosting on the cover. It is a collection of somber poems that reflected a period of his life.
Robertson’s writings have appeared in more than 500 periodicals, websites and anthologies.
