Passenger fright
Brian Campbell publishes post-9/11 prose poems
by Christopher Olson
Brian Campbell explores modern techniques of torture and technology in Passenger Flight. GRAPHIC JONAS PIETSCH
We’ve come a long way since Leonard Cohen wrote those famous lyrics, “She feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China.”
“Now everything comes from China,” said Brian Campbell, whose book of prose poems, Passenger Flight, invokes global warming, globalization, 9/11 and state-sanctioned torture.
“The Angel,” originally published in the 1980s, views torture from the point of view of the torturer and resonates a tad differently post-Abu Ghraib. When Campbell wrote about torture, he was referring to German SS physician and lead human experimentalist Josef Mengele.
Most of the book, however, was written starting in 2006, after Campbell’s 10-year absence from poetry while pursuing a music career.
“At first, I just started writing automatically to see what would come. But what happened is that a lot of these exercises became fully fledged prose poems,” he said.
A first draft of Passenger Flight, titled “Field of Gems,” ended up on the shortlist for the CBC Literary Awards in 2006.
“I later became conscious of the manuscript as a kind of survey of our modern world,” he continued.
The first poem in the book, entitled “Spoils,” explores the effects of globalization on a man who lords over his pricey imported furniture, including his bed, which he boasts comes from Sweden.
“Obviously it’s an IKEA bed,” said Campbell, “[in which] something like 50 per cent of Europeans have been conceived.”
Many of the objects mentioned in the poem are lifted straight from Campbell’s apartment.
“In fact, I kind of embody my message,” he commented. “It’s almost as if saying I’m a participant as well in the very things that are being held up to satire or examination.”
“To A Writer Who Complains,” a tongue-in-cheek lamentation of the lost art of writing with a pen and paper, was originally written as a blog post in response to a luddite who advocated cutting oneself off from technology. It’s an example of Campbell’s willingness to jump on the bandwagon of modern innovations like Facebook and Twitter.
“One of the difficulties of capturing our time poetically is that the technology that our lives are mediated through, and that dominates our lives, has not really entered into our subconscious,” said Campbell, who uses a keyboard and says it’s a misnomer to use the word “write” when “type” is more accurate in our day and age.
“But they just don’t have the same kind of [emotional] resonances,” he said, and likely won’t for some time.
“Even a pen and paper have less resonance than a quill and paper.”
Even if modern technology is all-encompassing, it’s also freeing, he said.
“Blogging has been very enriching,” said Campbell, who still hasn’t warmed up to Twitter, although at least he can say he’s tried it.
“At least Facebook has the strength of developing a community.”
Brian Campbell will be reading at The Yellow Door Poetry and Prose Reading on Oct. 15 (3625 Aylmer St.), along with writers and poets Hélène Rioux, Lesley Pasquin and H. Nigel Thomas. The readings start at 7:30 p.m. and costs $5.
Passenger Flight
Brian Campbell
Signature Editions
90 pp
$14.95
The Link Volume 30 Issue 25