This week on BOOKCHAT we feature Lauren Camp, outstanding author of five poetry collections. Lauren is a winner of the Dorset Prize, and her work has been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish and Arabic. A former visual artist, she lives in New Mexico.
When were you happiest?
Last night, sitting in my garden for that blue hour of dusk. But also, I was a happy child, glad to be reading in a fancy chair in our never-used living room or making art from whatever materials I could scrounge. In fact, most days, I’m content—if I keep my focus close.
What’s your guiltiest pleasure?
I don’t believe in guilt, but I do believe in pleasure. Right now, I’m delighted by Prosecco. Also, my husband built me an outdoor nest. I like to climb into a chair in my nest and read novels under the mulberry tree for as much time as I can pull away from the endless details.
What’s the trait you most deplore in others?
I have a strong (sometimes unfounded) belief in the goodness of folks. More basic even, I find people’s strange behaviors interesting. But I’m seriously put off by rudeness.
What’s the most important lesson life has taught you?
It sounds simplistic, but I love being kind. It’s a selfish sort of generosity—radiating out, while still feeling good to me, and so I always want to do more of it.
What book(s) are you reading now?
I’ve been consuming a great amount of literature in these first months of the pandemic. I just finished Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, three novellas by Andre Dubus, and a number of poetry collections, which I am always reading in tandem and between any other work.
What books might people be surprised to find on your shelves?
Echogee: The Little Blue Deer, a picture book written and illustrated by Acee Blue Eagle. My mother read me this book when we’d visit my grandparents in Tulsa. Blue Eagle was Muscogee (Creek) from Anadarko, Oklahoma. The story and imagery is all tied up with my childhood and those yearly trips. My mother rarely read to me after I learned to read.
Which genres do you read? Which do you avoid? Why?
I read fiction, gobs and tons of poetry, and sometimes essay or creative nonfiction. I don’t read science fiction, self-help or murder mysteries.
What book(s) “should” you have read but haven’t, or what “classic” couldn’t you finish?
There are many books I hope to read, but I don’t operate in shoulds and I’m clear that I’d have to survive three lifetimes to get to them. I’m very willing to give up on books that don’t offer me something. There’s a freedom in that decision to put a book down—and move on.
Tell us about your latest book in no more than 50 words.
Took House is a book about intimate relationships. Itnavigates a landscape of bone and ash, wine and circumstance in vulnerable poems of obsession. Through ekphrastic poems and poems about raptors, the unknown appears and repeats, eerily echoing need. Blame, power and disorder hover, unsettling what we know of love.
Where can we find this book?
At my website (www.laurencamp.com) or through Tupelo Press (https://www.tupelopress.org/product/took-house/).