Somehow, I Haven't Drowned - Robin Gabbert

Robin Gabbert has poems in state, national, and international poetry anthologies. She is the 2025 winner of the Fran Claggett-Holland award for her contributions to poetry and the poetry community. Her poem Invisible was a finalist in the 2024 San Francisco Writers Conference Contest for Poetry and she was long-listed for the Frontier Poetry (Not) In Love Tanka Challenge in 2024. Her chapbook of ekphrastic poetry and art - The Clandestine Life of Paintings, in Poems was published in 2022 and Diary of a Mad Poet 2020. Robin's passion is to capture the essence of a situation or feeling in a few well-chosen words. She teaches, and is a frequent speaker on ekphrastic poetry, and is a poetry judge and editor for the California Writers Club and North Bay Poetics. When not writing, she likes to frolic with her pup Hamish, spend time with family, and read mysteries. See more about her at www.robingabbert.com. \n\n \n\n Winner of the Fran Claggett-Holland Award for Poetry \n\n \n\n Somehow, I Haven't Drowned. Don't overlook the title of this amazing collection of poems by Robin Gabbert. Robin, like Robert Frost, is a trickster poet-with subtler meaning always present in her poems. It is easy to get swept up in her ability to get right to the heart of one tragedy after another, while emerging strong and determined in the next poem. The book is beautifully structured, so take time to follow her clues. She is masterful in building mood and tone in the sections, and awakening in her readers almost a companionship, before returning us to her vivid finales. \n\n \n\n - Fran Claggett-Holland, writer, poet, educational consultant \n\n \n\n The poems in Robin Gabbert's Somehow, I Haven't Drowned emerge from the hands of a keen and candid observer who speaks her mind and her heart. These courageous poems slip into the space between stars and trees... make bones light up...make your every breath rattle. This poet is fearless and does not shy away from hard truths and harsh realities.Like the title of this remarkable collection the poems within are too buoyant to sink. \n\n \n\n - Les Bernstein, poet \n\n \n\n \n\n