Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Robert Fetterman’s work for the past three decades traverses in the realm of the found: repurposed language and images, assembled in new ways. The reasons for this strategy are numerous, but, for him, all of them intersect political, social, aesthetic, and personal concerns.
What Rob aims to bring to the larger discussion about appropriation in art is affect—an emotional, personal positioning that places “a” subjectivity at the centre of the work. In this way, he thinks of his writing as a gesture to reimagine the lyric poem. In many of his books, the self is portrayed as a collective chorus of voices. Robert uses online articulations and research to create characters that are in a relationship with the social world.
Rob Fitterman teaches writing & poetry at New York University & The Bard College, Milton Avery School of Graduate studies & will deliver the inaugural 22/23 INSIDE/OUT lecture on 12 October 2022.
The mission of our prestigious INSIDE/OUT series of lectures is to bring the best minds of our generation to inspire and support the work students and staff do across the Leeds School of Arts. To this end, we have flown in renowned speakers from around the globe. To enhance the cultural life of Leeds, we make the lecture series open to the general public and available to an international audience online.
Lectures will be available as digital films through the LARC website and open to all.
Robert Fitterman is the author of 14 books of poetry including: No Wait, Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself (Ugly Duckling Presse), This Window Makes Me Feel (Ugly Duckling Presse), Rob the Plagiarist (Roof Books), and Metropolis—a long poem published in four volumes.
He has collaborated with several visual artists, including: Serkan Ozkaya, Nayland Blake, Sabine Herrmann, Natalie Czech, Tim Davis, Klaus Killisch.
Robert’s writing has been described as “a poetry often composed of found texts that emphasize the personal relationship to social themes with broad critiques of cultural institutions and constructs such as chat rooms, consumer reviews, shopping malls, museums, etc.”
Robert is the founding member of the artists-poets collective, Collective Task http://collectivetask.magnetberg.de/. He lives in New York City and teaches writing at New York University www.robertfitterman.com
