As Is
ARP Books - September 5th, 2024
As Is is a study in place, the town of Hamilton Ontario, considering what it means to be connected to or attempt a connection to place as a settler. Many of the poems function as counter-histories, reading the local history and extracting details that get glossed over elsewhere: the first public building being a prison, the public hangings, the botched first treaty. Other poems are situated in the present, the personal, and look at how these founding errors ring through into the present, for both the individual and the community. As Is searches for alternative frames for defining a local identity: expanding the sense of time to include the prehistoric, the fossil record of mammoth and wapiti in the area, and expanding the sense of place to consider the treaty boundary as a possible framework for understanding the region. Unusually for a book of poetry, it attempts reckoning with actual historical record.
“As Is serves as a historical reckoning. Taking an unvarnished look at how settler activity formed the city currently known as Hamilton, Ontario, Ben Robinson blurs neglected public records with personal lyrics, by turns interrogating the region’s placedness and its colonial legacy. This is an unflinching, necessary debut.”
- Jim Johnstone, author of The King of Terrors
“Robinson, a librarian in Hamilton, looks at our city’s recorded history through an alternative lens, extracting details that one is unlikely to find in traditional history books. He brings together the past and present, challenging dominant narratives about Hamilton, examining how they define our local identity today. A study of place, As Is is an innovative look at history, connection, and the lasting impact of colonialism.”
- Jessica Rose, Hamilton City Magazine
“Through long sweeps of short lines and historical space interspersed with shorter, first-person lyrics, Robinson provides As Is the feel of a kind of field notes, moving across and through layers of personal history, the history of Hamilton, and the occupation of centuries.”
- rob mclennan