Across her writing and performance in whatever form it takes, Kimberly Campanello’s abiding preoccupation is with the power of language to ‘change states’ in all senses of the phrase – changing our understandings of the law and the State, changing our emotional-physical-spiritual-intellectual states, and changing its own state as each word shifts and morphs with every use and encounter.
Kimberly Campanello is the author of the poetry-object and durational performance MOTHERBABYHOME (zimZalla, 2019). She is an inaugural Markievicz Award winner from Ireland's Arts Council and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for (S)worn State(s) (The Salvage Press, 2024) with Dimitra Xidous and Annemarie Ní Churreáin and an Arts Council Ireland Literature Project Award for sorry that you were not moved (2022), an interactive digital poetry publication in conversation with Calvino’s Invisible Cities created in collaboration with Christodoulos Makris and Fallow Media.
Her next poetry collection An Interesting Detail is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Poetry in April 2025.
Her debut novel Use the Words You Have releases in June 2025. It is the inaugural book published by Somesuch Editions, the imprint of BAFTA and Oscar-winning production company Somesuch.
Extracts from her work-in-progress, a new version of Dante’s Commedia, have appeared or are forthcoming in Firmament, Poetry Ireland Review, and Notre Dame Review.
She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.
Kimberly is represented by Becky Thomas at Lewinsohn Literary.
author photo Olivia Brabbs