Jen Campbell's The Girl Aquarium in The Guardian
‘Poetry of innocence and wonder. Poetry of darkness and deformation. The poems about girlhood experiences are daringly original.’ – Daljit Nagra
Jen Campbell's debut poetry collection, The Girl Aquarium, was published by Bloodaxe in April 2019. It explores the realm of rotten fairy tales, the possession of body and the definition of beauty. Her second collection, Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit, is forthcoming in September 2023.
Book Riot, online 19 April 2023
Jen Campbell’s debut poetry collection The Girl Aquarium was chosen for Kendra Winchester’s ‘8 disabled poets to add to your Poetry Month TBR’ feature for the US book website Book Riot. The Girl Aquarium is distributed in the USA by Consortium Books, and they will also be distributing Jen's second collection Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit from November 2023 following UK publication by Bloodaxe in September 2023.
‘When I think of some of my favorite contemporary poets, Jen Campbell always jumps to the top of my list. Campbell writes about themes around queerness, disability, and disfigurement, often intersecting these aspects of her identity with her love of fairy tales. Campbell’s word choice is perfection, and like all great poetry, when her poems are read aloud, they gain a new life. Her readings of her work are stunning. Her latest collection, Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit, comes out later this year [2023].' - Kendra Winchester, Book Riot (Top 8 books by disabled poets for Poetry Month), on The Girl Aquarium
Read the feature on Book Riot here.
The Guardian, Wednesday 30 June 2021
Jen Campbell’s debut poetry collection The Girl Aquarium was No 2 in a feature on ten books inspired by circus and spectacle. Elizabeth Mcneal writes: ‘All of these books and collections are feats of the imagination, where the author’s hand never falters, and which cut through the dazzling trickery of showmanship with often devastating effect.’
‘This blistering poetry collection explores showmanship, the so-called freak industry, fairytales and spectacle – and, in fact, it doesn’t so much unpick these things as smash them to pieces and make them new… I love so much about it: how it kicks against tropes of disfigurement, how science jostles against fantastical circus, how it explores the way in which girls’ bodies can be sites of both self-discovery and exploitation. It is defiant, bold, brilliant. As the penultimate poem states, “Smash this circus to the ground”.’ - Elizabeth Macneal, The Guardian (Top ten books about circuses and spectacle)
Read the feature in full here.
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Jen Campbell on The Girl Aquarium, 23 July 2021
Jen Campbell chats about disability, queerness, circuses and folklore and reads from her debut collection The Girl Aquarium. She reads her poems 'Netted', 'The Woman's Private Looking-glass', 'Hello, Dark', 'Hero', 'The Doll Hospital' and 'Kitchen'.
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Jen Campbell on the Waterstones vlog, 26 April 2019
Jen Campbell in conversation with Will Rycroft of Waterstones talking about her first poetry collection The Girl Aquarium, and also queerness, dialect (in her case Geordie/Mackem) and why Hollywood is obsessed with disfiguring its villains and how this affects people with disfigurements.
[01 July 2021]
