Bio

Joseph Robertson, founder and director of Casavaria, is a poet, writer, editor and photographer. He is editorial director of CafeSentido.com —the news, politics, art, culture and exhibits project— and its primary writer-reporter. He is also the creator and director of TheHotSpring.net, a social networking project dedicated to developing paradigm-shift technological innovations and crafting complex policy proposals for economic and political crises.

He writes in English and Spanish (as well as explorations in other languages), and is a professor of Spanish language and humanities at Villanova University, where he completed his MA in Spanish Language and Literature. He is a long-time student of philosophy, literature and environmental science, and is acknowledged by Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), in the book Plan B, for his translations of EPI ecology reports, into Spanish.

His first book in print was Breves penumbras, a collection of his poetry, written in Spanish. His work is devoted to expanding the expressive quality of the human experience, and to cultivating interest in the meaningful complexities which often go without comment or comprehension, but which are largely responsible for all forms of human dignity.

His second book was also a collection of poetry in Spanish, Otro posible desvío de lo esperado, and was introduced to the public in Barcelona, Spain, in April 2007. His third collection of poetry Jaguar y cascada. was published in March 2010. His first published book in English —scheduled for early 2011— is a collection of essays on aesthetics and social philosophy, entitled Cave Painting: aesthetics and the making of meaning. Also in the works is the book Ptarmigan: a novel in verse miniatures.

As part of Casavaria’s first blog site and online literary workshop, Elindulnék —where much of his works in progress can be explored—, he is preparing a bilingual edition of diary extracts, short essays and social commentary, entitled Numbering Sands, and intended as the beginning of an ongoing work which will include periodic expansions and new volumes.

The most comprehensive and ambitious of his projects at present is The Hot Spring Network, which aims to form a dynamic online community that will take on issues ranging from energy generation to food security, water scarcity, conflict resolution, healthcare innovations, wireless communications technologies and publishing. You can join him and others there to start creating a more dynamic, sustainable future.