Professor Kimberly Campanello
- Position: Professor of Poetry
- Areas of expertise: poetry and poetics; innovative poetry; visual and concrete poetry; the long poem; ekphrasis; translation; experimental writing
- Email: K.A.Campanello@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 4775
- Website: Personal Website
Profile
I joined the School of English in 2018 as the inaugural Lecturer in Creative Writing and Programme Leader for the BA English Literature with Creative Writing (2018–2021) after holding a Lecturership at York St John University (2015–2018) and teaching Creative Writing at a number of institutions and organisations in the US, Ireland, and the UK. I was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021 and Professor in 2023. I am Practice Research Lead for the School of English.
I am best known for MOTHERBABYHOME, a collection of 796 conceptual and visual poems on the St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway, was published by zimZalla Avant Objects.
My poems have appeared most recently in Poetry Ireland Review, The White Review, and The Cambridge Literary Review and The Poetry Review. A long sequence on my experience of Young Onset Parkinson’s ‘Moving Nowhere Here’ was published in Granta. My prose has appeared in Tolka, Somesuch Stories, and The London Magazine.
I represented the UK in Munich at Klang Farben Text: Visual Poetry for the 21st Century, a three-day visual poetry festival inspired by the international concrete poetry movement of the 1950s and 60s. Other recent appearances include the Ledbury Poetry Festival, A Single Rose (a festival celebrating the centenary of Leland Bardwell at the Model Arts Centre, Sligo), and the Ripples of Hope Festival (Robert F Kennedy Foundation, HOME Manchester).
My visual poetry features in the international anthology Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry published in Sweden by Timglaset. My asemic writing and autofiction were most recently exhibited in at HAUS Vienna and is published in Praxis (Dostoyevsky Wannabe).
I received a Markievicz Award from Ireland's Arts Council and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for (S)worn State(s), a poetry collaboration with Dimitra Xidous and Annemarie Ní Churreáin (forthcoming from The Salvage Press) and an Arts Council Ireland Literature Project Award for sorry that you were not moved, a digital writing collaboration with Christodoulos Makris and Fallow Media. I recently received an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Award to foster my writing on chronic illness/disability.
My work has been described by poet Pádraig Ó Tuama as: ‘a confrontation, a lamentation, a powerful objection and a revolution’. In Poetry, Politics, and the Law in Modern Ireland, Adam Hanna says that ‘MOTHERBABYHOME reminds us, though poems can never substitute for legal scrutiny, or replace the need for the pursuit of justice by a legal system, we should nevertheless not underestimate what they can do. They are spaces that exist outside the narratives, and therefore the elisions and erasures, of the state. Indeed, as is the case in Campanello’s poetry-object, they can enact new forms in which these elisions and erasures become visible.’
Responsibilities
- Practice Research Lead
Research interests
My interests include poetry (especially visual and innovative poetry), the use of archival material, ekphrasis, translation, and the long poem.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>
Qualifications
- PhD in Creative Writing, Middlesex University
- MA in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati
- MFA in Creative Writing, University of Alabama
- BA in English and French, summa cum laude, Butler University
- Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice
Professional memberships
- National Association of Writers in Education
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Society of Authors
Student education
I was inaugural Programme Leader for the BA English Literature with Creative Writing (2018–2021). I teach poetry at all levels in the School.
Practice-led PhD applicants are welcome to contact me for support in my role as Practice Research Lead. As a supervisor, I only consider practice-led PhD applications in poetry.
I am currently on sabbatical in the academic year 2024-25.
Research groups and institutes
- Creative Writing at Leeds
- Poetry Centre
- Centre for Practice Research in the Arts
- Leeds Centre for Dante Studies
- Medical Humanities Research Group