Kit Robinson

Robinson's essays on poetics, art, travel and music may be found online at Open Space, Jacket2, and Nowhere, and on his website. He lives in Berkeley and plays Cuban tres guitar in the charanga band Calle Ocho. Since 2016, Calle Ocho has played nearly 40 public performances as well as many private gigs.

Born in Evanston, Illinois, Robinson graduated from Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati and earned a BA in philosophy and English literature at Yale College in 1971. In 1974, he published the one-shot poetry magazine Streets and Roads, where for the first time work by such poets as Barrett Watten, Ron Silliman, Rae Armantrout, and Bob Perelman appeared alongside that of Alan Bernheimer, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, and Merrill Gilfillan. In the 1970s and 1980s, he performed with San Francisco Poets Theater, produced "In the American Tree: New Writing by Poets," a weekly radio program of live readings and interviews on KPFA radio in Berkeley (with Lyn Hejinian), and curated the Tassajara Bakery poetry reading series (with Tom Mandel).

During the first phase of his writing career in the 1970s, Robinson worked as a cab driver, teacher’s aide, postal clerk, and legal reporter. He taught poetry writing through the California Poets in the Schools program, 1976-1983. Thereafter, Robinson pursued a career in corporate communications for the information technology industry. From 2003 until 2019, he established Kit Robinson Communications, providing consulting and writing services in the areas of marketing strategy, messaging and positioning.

Kit Robinson (born May 17, 1949) is an American poet, translator, writer and musician. An early member of the San Francisco Language poets circle, he has published 28 books of poetry.