Robert Fitterman

Born in St. Louis and raised in nearby Creve Coeur, conceptual poet Robert Fitterman earned a BA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MA at Temple University.

Fitterman is the author of more than a dozen collections of poetry, including Rob's Word Shop (Ugly Duckling Press, 2019), Nevermind (2016), now we are friends (2010), Rob the Plagiarist (2009), and three volumes of Metropolis (2009, 2004, 2002), a serialized long poem of city life in four volumes. He often builds poems through appropriating and recontextualizing found text, ranging from photo captions in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Holocaust Museum, 2013) to expressions of loneliness posted on online message boards (No, Wait. Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself., 2014). In nearly all of Fitterman's writing, he explores the possibility of a new lyric form by composing with found language to construct a chorus; often using found language that articulates a personal, subjective relationship to social themes. His books tend to be single book-length poems with broad critiques of cultural institutions and constructs such as Facebook, online chat forums, museums, eBay, and Yelp. With the poet Vanessa Place, Fitterman co-authored Notes On Conceptualisms (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), a prose exploration of conceptual writing. In 2008, he founded and continues to organize the artist collective, Collective Task.

Fitterman lives in New York City, where he teaches writing and poetry at New York University and at the Bard College's Milton Avery School of Graduate Studies.