How
did you first come to poetry?
I always loved reading and my English classes at school in Elkhart, Indiana. I kept checking out books from the local library and buying them at the amazing used bookstore downtown called The Bookstack, which is sadly no longer there. That’s where I found an old hardback anthology of American poetry and quite random books by everyone from Stephen Spender, to e.e. cummings, Gary Snyder and Anne Sexton. I still have the books I bought there. It’s hard to imagine now, but finding poetry books was difficult! You couldn’t order them on the internet or see people talking about them on social media. You really only knew about what happened to be in the library or bookshop, especially if you weren’t in a big city. During my undergraduate degree at Butler University in Indianapolis everything expanded with the university’s excellent visiting writers series and the fact that there were more bookstores and bigger libraries. The university library holds the papers of Etheridge Knight, which were incredible to go through as a young poet.
How does a poem begin?
For me, this depends on the poem. I do think my poems come out of an associative process rather than a narrative or rhetorical process. I’m not telling a story or making an argument (though these things can be embedded somewhere in the words). Instead, I’m making an experience in language.
How did publishing your first book change your writing?
My first book Consent (Doire Press, 2013) is so different from each of my later books and projects. It certainly didn’t define my future approaches, but it did consolidate a body of work that was written in a certain style and from a certain poetic mind-set. I’m still very proud of it. I can’t say I will ever write in quite that way again, but I think that’s a good thing. What I’ve found is that writing changes, or at least my writing changes, according to what I’m working on, what I’m reading. For me, I’m not content to replicate what I’ve done before, though I do think there are shared threads across all my books.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I have no schedule for writing during the academic year as teaching and meetings seem to take over. I fit it in when I can. In the summer or breaks when I don’t have to be anywhere and can work from home, I try to write when I get up and return to it throughout the day. Those days are the best days, but perhaps it’s because of the contrast with the rest of the year!
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
Online: Blackbox Manifold always has something interesting to read. Lately I’ve been very interested in the work published by newer online magazines Tentacular and Harana Poetry.
Print: Poetry Wales has been fantastic under the editorship of Nia Davies. I look forward to seeing what the next editor will do. I also love what Zarf and SPAM zine are up to.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
In the past couple of months I’ve had the good fortune to attend or participate in some fantastic symposia with readings: Gestures conference in Manchester, Poetry by Design in Leeds, and China/UK Poetry: Conversation, also in Leeds. At these events I was excited by the work of Daisy LaFarge, Sascha Aurora Akhtar, Jay G. Ying, and Jennifer Lee Tsai who are doing great things and are wonderful readers of their work. In my recent reading of online magazines, Nathan Walker’s work in amberflora stands out.
Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana, and is a dual Irish and
American citizen living in Yorkshire. Her poetry books and pamphlets include Consent, Imagines, Strange Country (on
the sheela-na-gig stone carvings), and Hymn
to Kālī (her version of the Karpūrādi-stotra).
In April 2019, zimZalla released MOTHERBABYHOME,
a 796-page poetry-object and reader’s edition book comprising conceptual and
visual poetry on the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland. Also in
April, above / ground press published her chapbook running commentary along the bottom of the tapestry. She was
recently awarded the 2019 Markievicz Bursary from Ireland’s Arts Council and
the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for her (S)worn State(s), a poetry collaboration
with Dimitra Xidous and Annemarie Ní Churreáin. She is Programme Leader for
Creative Writing and a member of the Poetry Centre in the School of English at
the University of Leeds.
A selection of her poems appeared in the second issue.
I always loved reading and my English classes at school in Elkhart, Indiana. I kept checking out books from the local library and buying them at the amazing used bookstore downtown called The Bookstack, which is sadly no longer there. That’s where I found an old hardback anthology of American poetry and quite random books by everyone from Stephen Spender, to e.e. cummings, Gary Snyder and Anne Sexton. I still have the books I bought there. It’s hard to imagine now, but finding poetry books was difficult! You couldn’t order them on the internet or see people talking about them on social media. You really only knew about what happened to be in the library or bookshop, especially if you weren’t in a big city. During my undergraduate degree at Butler University in Indianapolis everything expanded with the university’s excellent visiting writers series and the fact that there were more bookstores and bigger libraries. The university library holds the papers of Etheridge Knight, which were incredible to go through as a young poet.
How does a poem begin?
For me, this depends on the poem. I do think my poems come out of an associative process rather than a narrative or rhetorical process. I’m not telling a story or making an argument (though these things can be embedded somewhere in the words). Instead, I’m making an experience in language.
How did publishing your first book change your writing?
My first book Consent (Doire Press, 2013) is so different from each of my later books and projects. It certainly didn’t define my future approaches, but it did consolidate a body of work that was written in a certain style and from a certain poetic mind-set. I’m still very proud of it. I can’t say I will ever write in quite that way again, but I think that’s a good thing. What I’ve found is that writing changes, or at least my writing changes, according to what I’m working on, what I’m reading. For me, I’m not content to replicate what I’ve done before, though I do think there are shared threads across all my books.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I have no schedule for writing during the academic year as teaching and meetings seem to take over. I fit it in when I can. In the summer or breaks when I don’t have to be anywhere and can work from home, I try to write when I get up and return to it throughout the day. Those days are the best days, but perhaps it’s because of the contrast with the rest of the year!
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
Online: Blackbox Manifold always has something interesting to read. Lately I’ve been very interested in the work published by newer online magazines Tentacular and Harana Poetry.
Print: Poetry Wales has been fantastic under the editorship of Nia Davies. I look forward to seeing what the next editor will do. I also love what Zarf and SPAM zine are up to.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
In the past couple of months I’ve had the good fortune to attend or participate in some fantastic symposia with readings: Gestures conference in Manchester, Poetry by Design in Leeds, and China/UK Poetry: Conversation, also in Leeds. At these events I was excited by the work of Daisy LaFarge, Sascha Aurora Akhtar, Jay G. Ying, and Jennifer Lee Tsai who are doing great things and are wonderful readers of their work. In my recent reading of online magazines, Nathan Walker’s work in amberflora stands out.
A selection of her poems appeared in the second issue.