Lauren Camp is an author, artist and poet who lives in New Mexico and has read at ALL as a Black Earth Institute fellow. Her work has appeared in countless journals and anthologies and recently in ALL Review’s “How To Live” poetry series.
Camp's latest poetry collection, Took House, will be available in August, but it's already making waves in the creative community. Built around themes of craving, obsession, and solitude and published in the midst of a pandemic, it may be more relevant than she could have foreseen when writing the work.
ALL: There are very obvious themes of appetite, craving and obsession throughout Took House. How did you try to convey those parallels alongside each other? How do you think those emotions shape our behaviors?
Lauren Camp: I only write what obsesses me. And I generally write it from many angles, trying to unravel what I need. Over time and with revision, a kind of clarity begins to emerge. Or maybe it is better described as a layering of understanding about the subject. By that point, I've begun to include a reader or audience into my focus and hope they can find something valuable in the poem, too.
ALL: Food and emotion are intertwined throughout this collection. Our cravings stem from and extend far beyond food. How do you believe our lives are changed by those? Why do you think that is?
LC: We socialize (or used to, pre-pandemic) around food and drink. Every family conversation I can remember from growing up was in a restaurant or at a kitchen or dining table. Food and hungers for heritage and family history captivated me in my third book, One Hundred Hungers. I was trying to understand a homeland that was impossible to reach. Doesn't it seem likely that people exist through appetites of all sorts: for attachment, companionship, space, meaningful work and a million other things? Those hungers define our lives.
ALL: The line, "So little of what happens belongs to us / Only the frequent sense of being encircled," in "The Night Clouds Wrestled the Sky" is a great reminder that the world is bigger than we are. Why did you use nature to convey this idea that no matter how much pain, there is still beauty /stillness? Do you believe that?
LC: I definitely do. Nature is my sort of prayer-center, though I've come to that as an adult. I was raised in the New York suburbs. Manhattan was a destination, but not the right place for me to root to. I still love cities, but I've learned that I need to be able to work with dirt and grow plants, to watch the natural world. Also, my busy mind is balanced in quieter places.
Since 1994, I've lived in the high desert of New Mexico—a terrain of exquisite beauty. From my home in a rural farming village, nature is readily and steadily on display. Every day is coyotes and Apache plume and wind and the larger, unfurled landscape.
ALL: Nature can be brutal, too, just like humans. Poems about hawks feeding and ravens eating remind us of this throughout Took House. Why is it important to recognize both sides of nature? Of humans?
LC: In nature, brutality is simply part of their life cycle. Humans can be unkind to each other or have hidden motives, but raptors? They hunt because they need to eat. They tear apart their prey to meet their basic needs. Humans are more complex. I'm fascinated by our emotional needs and egos and the muddled ways we determine our (and others') worth.
ALL: "I Recommend You Not Empty of Content" was a poem that resonated with me, and I was wondering if you could tell me why you chose this form. What impact does the form have on the reading of this poem?
LC: "I Recommend You Not Empty of Content" is a pantoum, a Malaysian form of folk song from the 15th century. The pantoum is structured so that each line repeats a second time in a specific location. The form works like a whipsaw, with a push and pull motion. When a line repeats, it comes forward with a fresh context or meaning. The pantoum is a powerful way to deal with any sort of obsession or mania, any issue the writer can't stop thinking through. I love this form and love teaching it; even beginning writers get intriguing results from it.
ALL: I loved this line in "Best Portrait": "the pleasure / of finding the shape of a stranger in the curve / of a lens. Nothing shelters the shot. / No distraction." It is so honest, so raw, as all of these poems are. Why do you think it's important that we take those raw images of ourselves and really look at them?
LC: Thank you. I think "raw" is a compliment! I so prefer it to the alternative: what has been smoothed over and made perfect. Raw is the raptor pulling the flesh. But raw is also a wrong choice, something you can hardly hold, something that hurts. Raw may be uncomfortable to reveal, but more human and, therefore, more universal.
ALL: Always, but especially now, why do you think poetry can be such a valuable art form? What continues to draw you to writing it?
LC: A poem distills experience to a pinpoint focus. Because of the deep intimacy of the work, a reader can feel with a fuller, fresher awareness. Poems seem necessary in complicated, thorny matters of the heart (grief, loss and new love) where you can't make sense of what's happening. When there isn't a straight or easy reaction to be had, a great poem allows a reader to find him or herself. It offers confirmation for one's own thought or behavior or gives a new perspective on a weighty emotion.
I got a degree in communications and started off working in newspapers and public relations before moving into an editorial role at a magazine. I was technically proficient at prose, but that's all. I was not aware that I could improve and didn't care to, then, anyway. I wanted to write the piece and be done. Poetry taught me patience and the remarkable technique of revision. It taught me that work is better when it marinates. In twenty years of writing poetry, the genre hasn't stopped opening up for me.
ALL: How do you know when a poem is finished? What is your writing and editing process like?
LC: I've settled on this: my poems are for sure finished when they are published in books. But I'm perfectly happy in the process of writing, so even if I go back to a poem that I thought was finished four years ago, there's a joy again in the writing.
Which brings me to process: I write when I have something to capture—a line, an image, a concern or a beauty. I don't have a set schedule. I scribble down at least a few lines every day, and most days, I revise drafts. They are easier to drop into than a blank page. I like to read aloud as I revise, so I can hear where the poem catches or comes into shape.
