Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit explores disability, storytelling, and the process of mythologising trauma. Jen Campbell writes of Victorian circus and folklore, deep seas and dark forests, discussing her own relationship with hospitals both as a disabled person, and as an adult reflecting on childhood while going through IVF.
Please, Do Not Touch This Exhibit is Jen Campbell's second collection, and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her first book-length collection, The Girl Aquarium (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), was shortlisted for the poetry category of the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2019 and was a semifinalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 (Best Poetry category).
Recenzijas
These are poems which land the reader in the middle of a fantastical ocean and float them to shore on the precision and inventiveness of their imagery; these are poems that create their own mythspaces on the unstable edges of disability and chronic illness, poems which conjure new ways of articulating things about the experience of living in a body which might usually feel beyond language. -- Andrew McMillan Jen Campbell's astounding second collection draws us into a world of mythology, sea monsters and metamorphosis. These are hauntingly beautiful poems that catalogue transformation in all of its horror and joy, strangeness and tenderness. Reading these poems is like being yanked off your feet by hidden currents. This book will burrow under your skin and stay there. -- Cynthia Miller The poems are bold and assured. A delicate balance of wonder, playfulness and horrific revelation. -- Michel Faber This blistering poetry collection explores showmanship, the so-called freak industry, fairytales and spectacle and, in fact, it doesnt 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 *
11 At First, the House Is Blue
12 Anatomy of the Sea
15 Dear [ ______] [ 1]
16 The Hospital Is Not My House
19 Dear [ ______] [ 2]
20 The Hospital Is Not a Place for Bodies
23 Dear [ ______] [ 3]
24 For a While, the House Is Green
25 The House of Mirrors Is Owned by the Freak Show
26 The Body Festival
27 Ghost-Whisperer
28 Sometimes, The House Is Made of Glass
29 Dear [ ______] [ 4]
30 Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
31 Technical Rehearsal
32 First Thing, I Am a Forest
33 Dear [ ______] [ 5]
34 Alopecia
37 My Brain Is a Sleeping Thing
38 We Must Admit, the House Is Pink
39 Fell
40 For Some Reason, I Cant Stop Writing About Lighthouses
41 In My Dream, the House Is Dark
42 When I Revisit This Room, I Want to Leave Again
45 Poem as Bad Doctor
46 Somehow, the House Is Orange
47 The Five Stages of IVF
48 When It Arrives, It Weighs 5kg
49 The Hospital Is Not Big Enough for the Two of Us
52 Trying to Gain Entry into The Republic of Motherhood
53 This Is Just to Say
54 When I Go to the Woods
55 The Weekend the Garden Reected Our House
56 The Trees Are Part of the Process
57 Now, The House Is Red
58 This Doesnt Have a Name Yet
60 The House Is All the Colours, All at Once
61 Common Side Effects
Jen Campbell grew up by the sea. She is a bestselling author and award-winning poet. Her most recent books include a short story collection, The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night, a series of childrens picture books about a book-loving dragon called Franklin, and The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers (Thames & Hudson, 2021), a collection of gruesome tales illustrated by Adam de Souza. She won the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in 2013, received an Eric Gregory Award in 2016, is Vlogger in Residence for the Poetry Book Society, and was a judge of the Forward Prize in 2018. She talks about books, fairy tales and disfigurement at youtube.com/jenvcampbell. Her poetry pamphlet The Hungry Ghost Festival was published by The Rialto in 2012. Her first book-length collection, The Girl Aquarium, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2019. It was shortlisted for the poetry category of the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2019 and was a semifinalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 (Best Poetry category). She won the Spelt Poetry Competition 2022 for her poem 'The Hospital is Not My House' from her second collection, Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit (Bloodaxe Books, 2023), which is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She lives in London.
