Lauren Camp’s Comments

I write when I have a strange detail to possess or a worry to whittle, a marvel to shape. Whether that’s a phrase, an image, a seasonal element, there’s something that feels charged in it. That detail locates me somewhere off the map of what I live with and know; the newness infuses the familiar.

I like being in the process of writing more than having concluded it. Until I find a perfectly pleasing friction of words, my project is to add layers to the work. There’s the me who showed up enthusiastically for the first draft and the somewhat different me who came barging into the next draft with everything she knew at that moment, and so on. I’m not excavating the best poem from the page, not hollowing out. Instead, I am building upward. I see it as enriching the poem.

For me, the achievement is simply working on a layer. I don’t have to argue with myself over whether I’m succeeding at the poem as a whole or doing it fast enough or anything else. I’m finding the sounds that work on that day, hearing the poem anew. I’m rigorous in this layering, though that’s funny to say because it is deep pleasure.

Return to Archive