Robert Frazier (poet)



Robert Alexander Frazier (b. 1951, Ayer, Massachusetts) is an American writer of speculative poetry and fiction, as well as an impressionist painter on Nantucket Island.

Life
Frazier was born in Ayer Massachusetts. His mother, Barbara Brown Frazier, was an oil painter, who had been educated by Emil Gruppe (1896–1978) and Dimitri Romanovsky (1887–1971) for portraiture. His father, Stuart Wilson Frazier, was a civilian teacher of cryptoanalysis (code breaking) - for U.S. Army security at Fort Devens, a post he obtained after serving in the Army with a small contingent of Americans during World War II at Bletchley Park, the famous codebreaking center in England.

Robert Frazier was educated at the University of Iowa, where, as an undergraduate, somehow, after being misplaced in a first course, he was lucky to take graduate courses in poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

In the mid-1970s, he moved to Nantucket Island (his distant relatives were among the early settlers there), where an arts colony existed. He married Karol Marie Lindquist, a nationally recognized maker of the Nantucket Lightship Basket, in 1978, and attended the Clarion Workshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1980 (and returned there as the assistant in 1981).

He also began a career in oil painting then, which, after a 10-year hiatus to try working as a fiction writer (from 1988 to 1998), he resumed in 1998.

He freelances as a graphic designer as well, for a time designing books for SF publisher Mark V. Ziesing and was art director for Nantucket Magazine from 1995 - 2005.

He was president of the Artists Association of Nantucket from 1999–2004, and now works as their gallery director.

In 2008, he had his 7th consecutive solo exhibition of oil paintings at the Old Spouter Gallery on Nantucket Island.

In 2007, his article on painter Frank Swift Chase has been published in vol. 56, no. 3, of Historic Nantucket, a publication of the Nantucket Historical Association.

Family
He and his wife have one daughter, born in 1973, Timalyne (also a graduate of Clarion and an SF writer), and two granddaughters, Phoebe and Chloe.

Writing career
In 1984, Frazier edited the landmark anthology of SF poetry Burning With A Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic (Owlswick Press). He also edited and published one of the early magazines of SF poetry, The Speculative Poetry Review (later titled TASP). His first SF story, Across Those Endless Skies, appeared in In the Field of Fire (1987).

He is a founding member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and a past editor of their newsletter, Star*Line.

As a historian, Frazier has written several articles on the evolution of the SF poetry movement...the most recent being a 2005 primer on the Rhysling Awards for the poetry anthology, The Alchemy of Stars, the Rhysling Award Winners Showcase. The Science Fiction Poetry Association named Frazier a Grand Master] in 2005.

Recognition
He has won the Rhysling Award three times: for Best Long Poem in 1994, and for Best Short Poem in 1980 and 1989. His Robot Origami, from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction March 2005 was nominated for the 2006 Rhysling Award. His When Will Time Unfold, from the Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Spring 2006, was nominated for the 2007 Rhysling Award.

His collaborative poem with Bruce Boston, Chronicles of the Mutant Rain Forest, received first place in the 2006 Locus (magazine) Online Poetry Poll for "Best All-Time Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror Poem".

Poetry

 * The Daily Chernobyl and other poems. Cover by Katie Trinkle Legge, Anamnesis Press, 2000, winner of the Anamnesis Press Poetry Chapbook Competition of 1999.

Fiction

 * Co-Orbital Moons (cover by Gregorio Montejo). Ocean View Books, 1987.
 * Nantucket Slayrides (3 novellas with Lucius Shepard; cover by J.K. Potter). Eel Grass Press / Ocean View Books, 1989.
 * Chronicles of the Mutant Rain Forest (with Bruce Boston; cover by Frazier; introduction by Lucius Shepard). Horror's Head Press, 1992.
 * Invisible Machines (with Andrew Joron; cover by Thomas Wiloch). Jazz Police Books, 1993.
 * Family Secrets. Eel Grass Press, 1993.

Non-fiction
"Phantom Navigation", cover by Margaret Fox, Dark Regions Press, 2012.
 * Peregrine. Salt-Works Press, 1978.
 * "Burning With A Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic". Owlswick Press, 1984.
 * Perception Barriers. Cover by David Macaulay, Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press, 1987.
 * The Art Colony on Nantucket: Sixty Years of Contemporary Art (with George Thomas). AAN Press, 2005.
 * 'Exiled on Main Street''. AAN Press, 2011.
 * 'The Waterfront Artists, Painters Who changed Nantucket''. AAN Press, 2012.