Robin Blaser born 18 May 1925 (d. 2009)Robin Francis Blaser was a noted author and poet in both the United States and Canada.
Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the so-called San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and early 1960s. He moved to Canada in 1966, joining the faculty of Simon Fraser University; in his later years he held the position of Professor Emeritus and lived in British Columbia with his partner of 30+ years, David Farwell.
In June of 1995, for Blaser's 70th birthday, a conference was held in Vancouver, Canada to pay tribute to his contribution to Canadian poetry. The conference was attended by poets from Canada, the US and around the world.Robin Blaser was also well known as the editor of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, which includes Blaser's essay 'The Practice of Outside'. The 1993 publication The Holy Forest represents his collected poems to that date. In 2006, Blaser received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize.
Blaser died of a brain tumour on May 7, 2009, in Vancouver, at age 83.