Author Interview

Erik Campbell
Interview with Erik Campbell, author of Arguments for Stillness
by Alexandra Chrisovechotis, May 2006
Alexandra Chrisovechotis: Could you please start out by telling me a little bit about yourself?
Erik Campbell: Well, I am a former English teacher (although I am still certified). I used to teach 11th and 12th grade English at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. I am married and my wife’s name is Shari; we will have been married for 9 years on New Year’s Eve. Since July 2002 we have lived in Papua, Indonesia, where I work as a technical writer and she works in corporate responsibility for a mining company.
AC: What warranted your decision to choose Curbstone as your publisher?
EC: In April 2004, Texas Tech University contacted me in Papua via The Iowa Review, with whom I’d published a few poems, wondering if I had a manuscript available. They were requesting manuscripts from 14 people for the Walt McDonald First Book in Poetry series, and I was lucky enough to be among the 14. I scrambled to get a manuscript to them in time before the deadline, but in the end they didn’t select it for publication. A few months later, Stellasue Lee from Rattle, a literary magazine out of Los Angeles, asked for a copy of the manuscript, as Rattle and Curbstone Press were going into a joint venture—creating a Curbstone/Rattle imprint of sorts—and since I had published several poems and an essay in Rattle and had told her about the manuscript, she wanted to know if it was still available and see if it would work for this new imprint. Then, as with Texas Tech University Press, Rattle rejected the manuscript, so it didn’t even get into Curbstone’s hands. I debated abandoning the whole idea of publishing a collection, but somehow rallied myself (or fooled myself) and asked Rattle for another try. I had learned so much at this point regarding how poetry books are put together--about their balance and thematic structure--that I thought that with a great deal of editing and poem deletions and substitutions I would have a stronger, publishable manuscript. So I edited the manuscript like a madman and interrogated every stanza, every comma, and Rattle accepted it. But then Curbstone still had to approve the manuscript—so I became an expert at waiting nervously—and they ultimately accepted it as well. In fact, I found out that all editors had approved it on my 32nd birthday. Technically it was the day before my birthday, in America, that is. Regardless, it was the greatest birthday present I’d ever received. I was dancing for days. I’m still amazed. Dancing on the ceiling like Lionel Ritchie.
AC: Why did you select the title of one of your poems, "Arguments for Stillness," as your book title?
EC: I considered many titles for the book and regretted for a while that I wasn’t famous enough to simply call the book Poems. But I felt that the poem, “Arguments for Stillness,” encapsulated many of the book’s themes rather well and effectively indicated how the poems, hopefully, act as persuasions.
AC: Is Arguments for Stillness largely based upon your own life experiences, or simply on what you have observed to be true of your surroundings?
EC: The book is divided into four sections. The first section, “Potential Energies,” deals with “liberating” historical and literary figures from their traditional contexts; the second section, “Moments of Stasis,” confronts how writing can manipulate the environment and is essentially about writing and creating. The last two sections, “Still Lives” and “East,” deal rather explicitly with the theme of contemplation, and are very much autobiographical. “Still Lives” is the section wherein most of the first person poems appear and deals a lot with my marriage, whereas “East” deals tacitly or implicitly with themes governed by my time in other countries, namely countries in Southeast Asia.
AC: In reading your poetry, I encountered the common themes of passive expectancy and the deterioration of intellectualism. Through these themes, are you urging your readers to take on a proactive stance within their lives, rather than waiting for occurrences to happen to them? And do you think that eventually technology will take the place of the written word?
EC: Well, I’ve always considered an “intellectual” as someone who simply thinks about thinking. Unfortunately, we are now in a seemingly anti-intellectual age, and the term “intellectual” has been commandeered by the far right to be somehow anathematic, for example, Al Gore was lampooned by many for being too intelligent , and that’s just baffling to me.
Through my writing, regardless of theme or genre, I am invested in and trying to convey the idea that people who think carefully about abstractions should not be looked upon with contempt. When you think about it, all of the important questions in life deal with abstractions for which we all have our own idiosyncratic definitions, such as justice, death, and love. Like all poets and most writers, I am hugely concerned with and invested in such things—in giving form and respect to such things.
As for technology, I don’t like how we are becoming slaves to technology. In the past—the recent past—technology used to serve a tangible need, but today, especially with respect to digital communication, we seem to have a lot of technology that is supposedly beneficial, but, in my view, is damaging—that is, a lot of the time new technology doesn’t serve a need of ours, but rather creates another, self-perpetuating need.
Postman, Marshall McLuhan, Lewis Mumford, and others wrote extensively and cogently about what Postman coined “The Faustian Bargain of Technology,” meaning that every new technology both gives and takes away. For example, because of the Internet and e-mail, we have more and more disembodied relationships and de-contextualized knowledge than ever before. Likewise, PDA-style text communication and its consequent shorthand (e.g., LOL, IMHO) has created, in my view, an alternative and less rich sub-form of English. I don’t think that technology is a bad thing inherently. Like a hammer, it is morally neutral and can be used to build a house or bash someone’s skull in. But I wholeheartedly believe that we need to be mindful of how we are using technology and how it is using us. I don’t want us to bash our heads in while erroneously believing we’re having a great time.
AC: In one of the last stanzas of “Poem for Neil Postman,” you write, “I think I’ll go home and burn / All of my books / So there won’t be any evidence, / Any proof when they come for me.” Is this a direct reference to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and if so, do you believe society will ever reach the point of “book burning”?
EC: I suppose you could say this is an unconscious “shout-out” to Fahrenheit 451, which has always been a very important novel for me and is thankfully still required reading in most high schools. But I don’t believe we’ll ever get to the point of book burning, at least not in this country, but certain ideas are still being marginalized. Decades after Bradbury’s novel, Neil Postman piggybacked off of his themes and pointed out how we are becoming more and more Huxleyan, becoming enslaved by what we think we love. Bradbury is sadly becoming more prophetic, it seems that there is no longer time to read or discuss things due to the demands society places on us.
AC: What was your ultimate goal in writing Arguments for Stillness, and what message do you have for your readers?
EC: Ultimately I want to connect with people. When writing, I always hope that I have something to say that is of use to the readers and that I can render my thoughts well enough to matter to them. I think that’s what makes poetry so great—most all poetry writers merely want to connect, to redeem and give form to human experience.
AC: Can we expect another book of poetry in the near future, and if so, can you perhaps give us a small preview of what’s to come?
EC: Well, historically I write one thing at a time and don’t, strictly speaking, write specifically with books in mind. But, having said that, I am currently kicking around the idea of an essay and prose collection, much like Mary Oliver writes, half of which will deal with Papuan themes with the other half being a general, multi-themed poetry and prose omnibus. I would be thrilled beyond articulation were there another book in the future. That would be wonderful.

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