Lauren Camp

Lauren Camp is the author of four books, most recently Turquoise Door. She is the recipient of the Dorset Prize, a fellowship from Black Earth Institute, and a finalist citation for the Arab American Book Award. Her work has been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, and Arabic.

  • A verdant landscape stretches toward the horizon
    Lauren Camp
    Kristin Marie Enns-Kavanagh / Flickr Agnes Martin, Eye Hill Rural Municipality No. 382, Saskatchewan   The land moves            without qualm in billows and degrees             o...
  • The cover to Turquoise Door: Finding Mabel Dodge Luhan in New Mexico by Lauren Camp
    Lauren Camp
    Denver. 3: A Taos Press. 2018. 117 pages. Poet Lauren Camp takes us for a deep dive into the landscape and culture of New Mexico and its wealth of personality in her new book, Turquoise Door....
  • This view of Saturn’s rings from the “ringscape finale” series was among the last images Cassini sent back to Earth (September 13, 2017) / Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
    September 20, 2017 | Lauren Camp
    This view of Saturn’s rings from the “ringscape finale” series was among the last images Cassini sent back to Earth (September 13, 2017) / Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institut...
  • The cover to One Hundred Hungers by Lauren Camp
    Lauren Camp
    North Adams, Massachusetts. Tupelo Press. 2016. 91 pages. One Hundred Hungers is a book of exile, faith, and acceptance. Of flavor, desire, and violation. Poet Lauren Camp confides in us what...
  • Tony Webster, Dakota Access Pipeline protest at the Sacred Stone Camp near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, August 25, 2016
    September 15, 2016 | Lauren Camp
    Tony Webster, Dakota Access Pipeline protest at the Sacred Stone Camp near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, August 25, 2016 This poem addresses the demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pip...
  • Lauren Camp
    Letter to Baghdad Even if my father never speaks a word of it, I will knowhe brought a candle, a cough, and the occupied side of his heart.I will know the trees held him, that they rose above roofline...
  • Tigris River
    January 7, 2013 | Lauren Camp
    The Tigris River in Baghdad. Photo NewsHour/Flickr For nearly two years, I worked on poems about my father’s early years in Baghdad. Every now and again, I slipped an occasional question to my dad, h...
  • Lauren Camp
    Photo by Bu Yousef/Flickr At the Market in Baghdad, 1940 Every morning the elder took his sons to pray,then let them swim through the heat of the dijlawhile he and his servant went to marke...
  • Lauren Camp
    When I realized I could make mistakes . . . I decided I was really on to something. — Ornette Coleman                 You can tell by the rumble of tall incantationsthat he has secured sound into a m...
  • Lauren Camp
      I met Monk      on a subway, coming through the tunnel.          His words fell out be-     tween thick beard hairs,          then lumbered toward me, paused and sighed.                    When the...
  • Lauren Camp
    Listening suggestion: While reading Camp's essay, listen to Louis Armstrong’s version of the Fats Waller song “Black and Blue," available for streaming on YouTube. Can a writer ever hope to success...

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