About

Robyn Maree Pickens is an art writer, poet, curator, and text-based practitioner. Robyn’s art writing has appeared on Art Now, Contemporary HUM, The Art Paper, ArtAsiaPacific online, ANZJA, Art + Australia online, The Pantograph Punch, Adam Art Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery, Enjoy Gallery, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Christchurch Art Gallery Bulletin, exhibition catalogues, and Art New Zealand.

Robyn’s poetry has appeared in Landfall, Stand Magazine, Southword, Empty Mirror, Into the Void, Peach Mag, amberflora, SAND Berlin, Cordite, Plumwood Mountain, Matador Review, Jacket 2, at ARTSPACE, Auckland, in the Brotherton Poetry Prize Anthology published by Carcanet Press (March 2020) and in Fractured Ecologies (May 2020). She was a finalist of the 2018 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize (NZ) judged by Eileen Myles, winner of the takahē Monica Taylor Poetry Prize (NZ) 2018, a finalist of the inaugural Leeds Brotherton Poetry Prize (U.K) 2019. Her manuscript was a finalist of the 2019 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award (NZ). Robyn was long-listed for the Palette 2020 Emerging Poet Prize, a semi-finalist of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest (U.S) 2020, and shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize (Ireland) 2020. In 2021, Robyn was placed second in the Vallum Poetry Award (Canada), was a finalist of the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award (NZ), and winner of the IWW Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems. H/er poetry criticism has appeared in Rain Taxi and Jacket 2.

Robyn has recently submitted her PhD on reparative ecopoetics at the University of Otago. She was an art reviewer for the Otago Daily Times and Art News.

Robyn was awarded a writing residency at Saari Residence, Finland over January and February 2020, and a virtual art writing residency (2020-2021) at Art Residency | Al Balad organised by ATHR Gallery and the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture.

She is an editor of Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ).

This in-progress website includes links to a selection of recently published online art writing, poetry, essays, and fiction. Thanks for visiting!