Virginian Poet, Novelist and Playwright.

Meet Robert P. Arthur

Robert P. Arthur is a multi-award winning playwright, poet, and novelist whose plays and poems have been presented internationally. His best-selling book of poetry, Hymn to the Chesapeake, has been produced as a musical play of the same name and performed on grants in St. Petersburg, Russia; as well as in Washington; New York City; Maryland; and throughout Virginia.

About Robert P. Arthur

Robert P Arthur is a celebrated American poet, novelist and playwright.

Floyd Collins and the White Angels of Sand Cave

A play with an almost operatic blend of voices, stage movement, and contrapuntal action with delightful opportunities for experimentation by directors and set designers.

Rasputin: The Libertine

This full-length two-hour drama for a large cast has it all: drama. laughs, philosophy, absurdity, history, spectacle, grotesqueries, madness, lyrical flights, sex, and abundant stage magic.

Master William and the Finman

Rumoured to be the son of a selkie, during The Golden Age of Piracy, thirteen-year-old William is shipped out of his home in the Orkneys to become a pirate and falls in love with Anne Bonnie, the most notorious woman pirate of the age.

Silver Beach Road

Silver Beach Road The first forty pages of the book is a nakedly autobiographical look at the first ten years of the author’s life on the water on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Written in gulps and fleeting drizzles or shadows, each section is written in its own style from high diction to short thrusts […]

Robert Arthur’s Eastern Shore

The book includes four one-act plays, a selection of his award-winning poems, and “Hymn to the Chesapeake,” a poem/play with music.

Robert P. Arthur: Selected Works

Here are Arthur’s best poems over a forty-year period. Reading them, one wonders if his affinities for byways and love of dialects will eventually lead the reader around the world.

Vija’s War

Arthur visits a wide range of themes ranging from the Russian occupation of Latvia during WWII, a study of the Jamestown colony stripped of its fairy tale sheen, an examination of the sons of Adam, and more.

River Country

Based on the poetry of Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda and dramatized by Robert P. Arthur, the musical poem/play moves from an out-of-body, life-death experience when Kreiter-Foronda was young to her marriage to South American Indian Patricio Foronda

Phaedra

Phaedra is a postmodern verse treatment of an ancient myth in modern poetry. It won five Port Folio Awards, including Best Play.

Winter Tales By Candlelight

Written for the Generic Theatre in Norfolk, Virginia, it uses story telling, poetry, and music, including three original Christmas Carols,

Hymn to the Chesapeake (Expanded Edition)

Coffee table book with photographs by internationally celebrated pictorialist A. Aubray Bodine.

In stunningly gorgeous and evocative language, Arthur resurrects the almost lost culture and physical presence of the Eastern Shore

Hymn to the Chesapeake – A Play in Poetry and Song

This national and international experiment with a new form, the Poem/Play, has been seen by thousands in part or full (San Francisco, Washington D.C., New York City, Norway, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and St. Petersburg, Russia.

This poetic tribute to the Eastern Shore of Virginia helps preserve the people and places of a disappearing culture.

Hymn to the Chesapeake with A. Aubrey Bodine

Ranked as one of the finest books ever written about Tidewater, Virginia, Hymn is the best-selling book of its publisher, Road Publishers. Stunningly gorgeous and evocative language.

Angel Band

Full length Stage Play – Corey Coots is a rising star in the snake-handling Signs Following Church in the hills of Appalachia. He is supported by his wife, Star, who after his death aspires to become a preacher like her husband.

The Front Porch Trilogy

Will Granny get her demanded shave before they cart her off to the old folks’ home?

Three one-act plays: half-serious and half comic comedies reflective of life on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Maryland in the 1940’s. This much performed play, is considered one of Arthur’s best.

Strokes

Strokes is a brilliant complement to the famous book of poems, Hymn to the Chesapeake, which became known nationally and internationally, and was followed by Horse Hammock Point.

Rare Book available through Author. Published by San Francisco Bay Press.

Crazy Horse in Heaven

After the conflagration of the third world war breaks the bonds of consensual reality, ten brutal and psychologically damaged men set out on horseback into a wilderness of unexplainable natural phenomena. A wild and haunting epic of light and dark. Filled with unpredictable philosophical, psychological and physical horror.

Passover

Passover Robert P. Arthur and Aphrodite Anagnost are a terrifying pair of gifted verbalists who have pulled off one of the most evocatively written horror novels in decades. The winner of the Chanticleer book prize for a ghost story, Passover chronicles a day and night in the lives of a wealthy rural family that discovers […]

Music of Leaves

A tribute to Vincent Van Gogh.
Combining poetry, dance, biographical notes, music and drama, Music of leaves is an intensely beautiful and ultimately heartbreaking look at the life, work, and interior landscape of Vincent Van Gogh

Fut Gar and the Nature of Evil

Fut Gar and the Nature of Evil Fut is cutting edge material challenging the choreographer and director to merge martial arts forms with modern dance and poetry to fashion a one-of-a-kind choreo poem. Taking a deliberating Western view of Eastern philosophy, the poem serves as a poetic framework for the evolving mental states of a […]

Horse Hammock Point

Horse Hammock Point As a sequel to the poem/play, Hymn to the Chesapeake, Robert P. Arthur continues the story of Tommy, Hymn’s protagonist. Tommy’s yearns for the return of his son, lost at sea. The poem/play, like Hymn to the Chesapeake and Strokes, is achingly beautiful and solidifies Arthur as both dramatist and one or […]

Crazy Horse’s Woman

Crazy Horse’s Woman Flat out ignoring time, space, and reality, and employing surrealism, contemporary philosophy, and Whitehead’s Corollary, as well as hysterical sexuality and obsession with bloody death, this heroine’s account is history-based but follows it’s explosive poetic language into stunning truths of the human condition. Adults only, but maybe not all adults. Can be […]

Contact Robert P Arthur
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