Awarded the 2010-2011 Urban Grace Soul of the City Poet Laureate of Tacoma title, Tammy Robacker serves and promotes the art of poetry with the community by teaching, reading and speaking all over the area. Ms. Robacker studied Creative Writing & Poetry at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and graduated with a B.A. degree. She studied for her M.A. degree in Communications & Mass Media at University of Wyoming in Laramie, WY. Now, actively involved in Washington State's South Sound as a poet, a freelance writer, and a volunteer, Robacker also serves as secretary of the board for Puget Sound Poetry Connection. In 2009, she co-edited a Tacoma poetry anthology, with former Urban Grace Poet Laureate of Tacoma, Bill Kupinse, titled:In Tahoma's Shadow: Poems from the City of Destiny.
Tammy's poetry has appeared in Plazm, Floating Bridge Review: Pontoon, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Word Salad, Pens on Fire, and the Allegheny Review. Ms. Robacker's poetry manuscript, We Ate Our Mothers, Girls, was selected as a finalist in the 2009 Floating Bridge Press chapbook contest in Seattle, WA. Tammy Robacker runs her own freelance writing company called, Pearle Publications. Her editorial writing has appeared in SHOWCASE Magazine, CITY ARTS Magazine, and the Weekly Volcano.
Northwest poet Tammy Robacker deserves praise of the highest order for her first book, The Vicissitudes. The Vicissitudes presents a deep and daring collection of poetry from this new writer. Each poem is a highly-polished memento that has emerged exquisite from a bumpy, personal spin among all manner of her life's vicissitudes and the poet's own pure talent. Robacker's work candidly, courageously, and oftentimes comically pokes fun at puberty, scoffs authority, languishes lost love, battles cancer, dances dizzy in red high heels, and hitchhikes its way straight into your heart." -- Pearle Publications
Robacker's collection of poetry, The Vicissitudes, was made possible due to funding by the
Tacoma Artists Initiative Program (TAIP) grant awarded to her in 2009 from
the City of Tacoma and the Tacoma Arts Commission.
Click here to read Tammy's poem, On the Bureau, Bullets from The Vicissitudes.
"In Tammy Robacker's The Vicissitudes, the poems are at once tender and tough. ...Robacker leaves no one behind, and her humor is the good cop throughout these poems."
--Kevin Miller, Poet, Home & Away: The Old Town Poems
"Tammy Robacker's poems are acts of remembrance, the deliberate piecing together of fragments into that uncanny assemblage that constitute the adult self. Reading Robacker's work, I am struck by the frankness with which she recounts emotionally difficult material and by the honesty of her language. These poems are confessional in the best sense of the word: they bear witness, they show faith, they trust."
--William Kupinse, Poet, Fallow and the 2008-09 Poet Laureate of Tacoma, WA.
Tammy Robacker supports the following literary arts and poetry organizations.
Check them out!
Speak Your Soul (SYS)
Kings Bookstore
Puget Sound Poetry Connection (PSPC)
Exquisite Disarray Publishing
Tacoma Arts Commission
