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.
Kristin Marie Enns-Kavanagh / Flickr
Agnes Martin, Eye Hill Rural Municipality
No. 382, Saskatchewan
The land moves
without qualm
in billows and degrees
o...
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 Institut...
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
This poem addresses the demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pip...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...