A01=Elizabeth Robinson
abandonment
activism
addiction
alcoholism
American poetry
Author_Elizabeth Robinson
Boulder
Bridge House
Category=DC
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
Category=FXP
class
Colorado
community care
Community Table
compassion
contemporary American poetry
contemporary poetry
court system
creativity
domestic violence
drug use
drugs
Elizabeth Robinson
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
generosity
gratitude
grief
home
homeless
homeless crisis
homeless people
homeless shelter
homelessness
hope
housing insecurity
incarceration
legal system
mental health
mental illness
money
need
opioid crisis
panhandling
parable
poetry
police
police violence
political poetry
politics
poverty
PTSD
resistance
resourcefulness
shelter
sobriety
social justice
soup kitchen
substance use
survival
systemic violence
trauma
trust
unhoused
unhoused crisis
unhoused people
volunteering
Vulnerability Index
winter
withdrawal
Product details
- ISBN 9780810149205
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Nov 2025
- Publisher: Northwestern University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Poems from the halls of shelters, courthouses, and soup kitchens
During Elizabeth Robinson's six years working with chronically unhoused people in Boulder, Colorado, her relationships with the community's most vulnerable deepened - even as they were filtered through a web of paperwork, systems, and strictures. The Vulnerability Index questionnaire is just one such system. Ubiquitous in shelters across America, it is representative of the endless tasks that people living on the street must complete to receive even minor assistance.
Moving between the local court, jail, shelter, and soup kitchen, Robinson's poems capture the strange juxtapositions of the intimate, bureaucratic, and absurd that such spaces demand: a frostbite victim wants to share his state-sponsored recovery room with a friend from the street, a domestic violence survivor must change her name and even her social security number, an unhoused activist joins a vigil for another woman only to discover that she is, mistakenly, the person being mourned. Spare yet richly empathetic, Robinson’ s verse works to implicate the reader's own vulnerability on every page.
During Elizabeth Robinson's six years working with chronically unhoused people in Boulder, Colorado, her relationships with the community's most vulnerable deepened - even as they were filtered through a web of paperwork, systems, and strictures. The Vulnerability Index questionnaire is just one such system. Ubiquitous in shelters across America, it is representative of the endless tasks that people living on the street must complete to receive even minor assistance.
Moving between the local court, jail, shelter, and soup kitchen, Robinson's poems capture the strange juxtapositions of the intimate, bureaucratic, and absurd that such spaces demand: a frostbite victim wants to share his state-sponsored recovery room with a friend from the street, a domestic violence survivor must change her name and even her social security number, an unhoused activist joins a vigil for another woman only to discover that she is, mistakenly, the person being mourned. Spare yet richly empathetic, Robinson’ s verse works to implicate the reader's own vulnerability on every page.
Elizabeth Robinson is the author of several collections of poetry, including Pure Descent, the National Poetry Series winner, Apprehend, winner of the Fence Modern Poets Prize, and On Ghosts, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry.
