Robin Carstensen

Robin Carstensen is selected as the 2023-2024 Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi, by the People’s Poetry Festival Committee of CC. She is an original member serving on the People’s Poetry Festival since its debut in 2016, and begins her service as Poet Laureate in its eighth year. Robin Carstensen is a former Air Force Sergeant, medic, and Orthopedic Surgery Technician stationed in California, Europe, and Western Asia. After her military service, she began civilian life with her first partner in our Sparkling City by the Sea in 1988, and has been serving the Corpus Christi Community as a poet-scholar-editor-activist for over 26 years. She received an annual first-place award from Iron Horse Literary Press for her poetry manuscript, In the Temple of Shining Mercy, published by IHLP in 2017. She directs the creative writing program at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi as an Associate Professor of English, among her creative and fiercely dedicated colleagues and students. She was senior editor for the Windward Review: Literary Journal of the South Texas Coastal Bend, Vols. 15-17, where she now serves as faculty advisor for Vols. 18-21. She has taught workshops for Barrio Writers, the Coastal Bend Writing Project, and Young Author’s Camp, and teaches with a cohort of local artists for Corpus Christi Writer’s Studio, a non-profit writer’s community workshop, led by Sarah K. Lenz. Robin is the recipient of an Academy of American Poet’s University Prize and has earned annual first-place awards with So to Speak: Language, Intersectionality, Art and Many Mountains Moving: a Journal of Diverse and Contemporary Poetry. Her recent poems are published in Corpus Christi Writer’s Anthology, by William Mays; Dream of the River (Queer in the New Century) by Jacar Press; Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast; Southern Humanities Review; Voices de La Luna; Good Cop/Bad Cop and Dreaming: A Tribute to Selena Quintanilla Perez, from FlowerSong Press; Cloud Women’s Quarterly; Eco-Theo Review, Lone Star Poetry: Championing Texas Verse, Community, and Hunger Relief, from Kallisto Gaia Press, and many more. Robin is also a co-founding, senior editor for Switchgrass Review: Literary Journal of Health and Transformation, Vols. 1-5. As a long-standing member of the Coastal Bend Wellness Community Medical Center’s Board of Directors, she partners with Pride Corpus Christi and co-hosts Pride Poetry events. She is a member of a joyful, energetic Yoga community, led by Manuel Garza. With this restorative practice, she is able to serve as faculty advisor for the Islander Creative Writers, a student organization also known as the merry band of witnesses who can be found creating new poetic flows, reading, and performing their work around town, changing the world one open mic at a time.