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Brian Campbell

BOOKS

An Unconventional Buddhist Poetics

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In the Forest of Faded Wisdom, Gendun Chopel, trans. Donald S. Lopez, Jr., University of Chicago Press

by Brian Campbell
11.01.2010

First kiss the arms and under the arms
Then slowly kiss the belly.
Becoming more intoxicated, kiss the thighs and vulva;
Draw the streams of the channels under the sea.

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BOOKS

The Joy of Onward, the Endless Fuel

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Expressway, Sina Queyras, Coach House Books

by Brian Campbell
16.11.2009

Drive down a freeway through typical North American urban sprawl – whether it be Toronto, New Jersey, Houston or L.A. – and you will encounter a cluttered yet relentlessly vacuous landscape.  In her latest collection, Expressway, Sina Queyras takes that landscape as an extended metaphor for our contemporary world:  a world of blurring speeds, heavy [...]

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BOOKS

Earthbound: Artful, Polished, Acute

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On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay, Robert Creeley, University of California Press

by Brian Campbell
08.08.2009

Robert Creeley died in Odessa, Texas, at sunrise one day in March, 2005. On his writing table was a black folder containing thirty-odd carefully typed poems; these, along with an essay he had written the previous year, were put together by his wife and other editors into a final collection, On Earth: Last Poems and [...]

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EVENTS

Duelling with America

Blue Met Blog

by Brian Campbell
27.04.2009

Tariq Ali is an Oxford-educated East Asian expatriate who has nevertheless maintained deep ties with his nation of origin. Famed for his silver-tongued oratorical skills, he kept a packed, multi-ethnic audience captivated with his account of American interventions in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, and brought out ripples of laughter and applause with caustic assessments of [...]

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EVENTS

Politics and the Writing Life

Blue Met Blog

by Brian Campbell
25.04.2009

Imagine you come home, turn on the TV, make popcorn, settle into the couch and really try to get into a show.  Meanwhile, your house is burning down. That’s how Carol Zardetto, a Guatemalan writer who spoke on Friday’s Politics and the Pen panel, described a Gen-X of younger, apolitical writers in her country. 

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BOOKS

News that Stays News

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PENNY DREADFUL Shannon Stewart, Signal Editions WHITE PORCUPINE Phil Hall, BookThug

by Brian Campbell
29.03.2009

With the momentous recent political and economic news, it may be all too easy to overlook what Ezra Pound called the “news that stays news.” Poetry has never pretended to be breaking news, but well executed, it can revive old verities with an immediacy that surpasses any reportage à la CNN.

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BOOKS

Of Clarity and Clutter

WHAT IF RED RAN OUT Katia Grubisic, Goose Lane Editions NOBLE GAS, PENNY BLACK David O’Meara, Brick Books

by Brian Campbell
10.11.2008

AS EARLY AS 1807, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH LAMENTED, “The world is too much with us.” Now it is always with us, in its richness and calamity; we can’t get away from it; frequently overwhelmed by sheer superabundance, we can feel paradoxically diminished, cut loose, cut off.  

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BOOKS

Playing Fast and Loose with Rules

JAILBREAKS: 99 CANADIAN SONNETS Edited by Zachariah Wells, Biblioasis

by Brian Campbell
03.10.2008

ANYONE LOOKING AT POETRY published in Canada over the last 40 years or so might conclude that free verse is the default mode. As the anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets shows, a great many Canadian poets have also been busy writing in that most traditional form, the sonnet – or at least using the form [...]

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