Born in Toronto, Ontario, Robertson moved to British Columbia in 1979, first living on Saltspring Island, then in Vancouver, where studied English literature and art history as a mature student at Simon Fraser University (1984–1988) before leaving the university without a degree to become an independent bookseller (1988–1994).She owned Proprioception Books, a bookstore in downtown Vancouver specializing in poetry, theory and criticism, where she also hosted readings.[1][2] During the 90s, she was also a member of The Kootenay School of Writing, which was a writer-run collective, and Artspeak Gallery. She began to publish and work collectively in this community of poets and artists. Her first book was a chapbook, The Apothecary, published by Tsunami Editions in 1991.[3] Since then she has published nine books of poetry, three books of essays, and a novel.[4]
Since 1995 she has been a freelance writer and teacher, occasionally working as a writer in residence or visiting professor in various universities in Canada, the USA and the UK. Her first such position was as Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellow in Poetry, at Cambridge University in 1999. During that time she completed the research that resulted in her book The Weather (2001), which has since been translated to French and Swedish. Her many essays on the contemporary visual arts, published in gallery and museum catalogues since the mid-1990s, are collected in her 2003 book Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture.[4]Anemones: A Simone Weil Project, her 2021 book, contains Robertson's translations of Simone Weil's 1941 essay "What the Occitan Inspiration Consists Of" and the 12th C poem "Lark" by Bernart de Ventadorn, as well as extensive annotations, an introductory essay, and archival material.
In 2006, Robertson was a judge of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Holloway poet-in-residence at UC Berkeley.[4] From 2007 to 2010 she taught at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In fall 2010 she was writer-in-residence at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. In spring 2014 she was the Bain Swigget lecturer in Poetry at Princeton University.[5] In 2017 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, and in 2018 she received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts C.D. Wright Award.[6] Her literary archive is housed at Simon Fraser University Library's Special Collections.
Her poetry collection Boat, a long poem extended and republished once each decade since 2003, when it began as a chapbook called Rousseau's Boat (Nomados Press), was shortlisted for the 2023 Pat Lowther Award.[10]
"Coasting" with Jeff Derksen, Nancy Shaw, and Catriona Strang. Telling it Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s. Ed. Mark Wallace. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 2002)
"The Weather: A Report on Sincerity," from DC Poetry Anthology 2001.[14]
"How Pastoral: A Manifesto." A Poetics of Criticism. Ed. Juliana Spahr. (Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994)
"My Eighteeneth Century." Assembling Alternatives. Ed. Romana Huk. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003)
