Travels in the Archive
Robert Gibbons
Publication History: Published in 2009 by Edge Editions.
Genre: Prose poems.
Travels in the Archive is a book-length sequence of prose poems by poet Robert Gibbons, written as a daily log between November 2007 and November 2008. The work brings sustained attention to lived experience, perception, and thought, recording the textures of daily life with precision and philosophical depth. Rather than advancing a single narrative arc, the book unfolds through accumulation—entries that register observation, memory, and reflection as interlinked acts.
Critic Jim Feast, writing in Evergreen Review, situates Gibbons among poets whose work, though often operating outside the mainstream, demonstrates exceptional craft and imaginative reach. In this volume, Gibbons’ central subject is “the pleasures of living,” rendered through language that is at once intimate and expansive.
The book is part of a long-standing collaboration between Gibbons and visual artist Bradford A. Fuller, encompassing book design, visual works, readings, and exhibitions that extend the project beyond the page.
Collaboration and Exhibition History
This project is part of a forty-year artistic collaboration between poet Robert Gibbons and visual artist Bradford A. Fuller. The collaboration has included book design, visual works, public readings, and exhibitions. In 2015, selections from Travels in the Archive were presented as large-scale printed panels on satin cloth and exhibited with a poetry reading during First Friday in Portland, Maine.