Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana, and is a dual Irish and American citizen living in York. Her most recent projects include MOTHERBABYHOME, a collection of 796 conceptual and visual poems on the St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway (Manchester: zimZalla Avant Objects, 2019) and sorry that you were not moved (2022), an interactive digital poetry publication produced in collaboration with Christodoulos Makris and Fallow Media.
New poems have appeared recently in Poetry Ireland Review, The Cambridge Literary Review and The Poetry Review.‘Moving Nowhere Here’ was the most-read poem in Granta in 2023. Her prose has appeared in The London Magazine, Tolka, Somesuch Stories and is forthcoming in The Pig’s Back.
She 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. Her visual poetry features in the international anthology Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry published by Timglaset.
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), a poetry collaboration with Dimitra Xidous and Annemarie Nà Churreáin (forthcoming from The Salvage Press) and an Arts Council Ireland Literature Project Award. She recently received an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Award to foster her writing on chronic illness/disability.
She is Professor of Poetry and a member of the Poetry Centre at the University of Leeds.
Kimberly is represented by Becky Thomas at Lewinsohn Literary.
Inaugural Professorial Lecture ‘Words Change States’: The Public Poet [<<<click to watch], University of Leeds / National Poetry Centre [May 2]
News & Events
2024
MOTHERBABYHOME exhibited as part of Is This a Poem? curated by Christodoulos Makris for Museum of Literature Dublin [Feb - July]
reading for Xing the Line, London [July 14]
Leeds Literature Festival with Tolka magazine [June 18]
American Association of Italian Studies, Sorrento, ‘They Said Grave Words about My Future Life’: Translating Dante’s Commedia in ‘Crip Time’ [June 5-8]
essay in The Long Poem Magazine, ‘The Irish Long Poem | The Long Poem in Ireland: Ailbhe Darcy, Christodoulos Makris, and Dimitra Xidous [launching May 11 in the Barbican Library, London]
articles on MOTHERBABYHOME and (S)worn State(s) in Études irlandaises and in Nordic Journal of Irish Studies
‘Creative Practice, Chronic Illness, and Disability’, Medical Humanities Research Group Seminar, University of Leeds
2023
‘Paradoxical Kinesia’ in Somesuch Stories
‘Spectral Child’ roundtable at Brotherton Special Collections, w/Liz Berry and Lucy Arnold
Intersectional Humanities Seminar Series, Maynooth University
‘Writing Chronic Illness, Just in Time’, Trinity College Dublin Medical and Health Humanities Seminar
‘Poetry, Illness, and the Poetry of the Medical Humanities’, British Medical Journal Medical Humanities Podcast
Holy Show / Tolka (Dublin) reading of ‘Essential Material’ w/Rob Doyle and Megan Nolan at Pallas Projects
Ledbury Poetry Festival, w/So Mayer and Milena Williamson
Residency at RAMDOM (KORA Arts Centre, Castrignano dei Greci, Italia)
reading for Maynooth University ‘Poetry and Poetics’ series
reading for University of Leeds Poetry Centre / Leeds Litfest ‘Spring Rhythm’
2022
A Single Rose: festival celebrating the centenary of Leland Bardwell, Model Arts Centre, Sligo, w/Annemarie Nà Churreáin and Victoria Kennefick
One Island, performance-installation at Wasmer Art Gallery (USA) with Ghostbird Theatre Company
Launch of sorry that you were not moved with Christodoulos Makris and Fallow Media
Poetry and Distraction, a reading for The White Review w/Caleb Klaces
2021
University of Leeds Poetry Centre Showcase, Ilkley Literature Festival
Gala Reading from Poetic Declaration, Ripples of Hope Festival (Robert F Kennedy Foundation), HOME Manchester
Poetry Circle with Simon Armitage, Ripples of Hope Festival (Robert F Kennedy Foundation), HOME Manchester
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) Summer School
Come Let the Blazing Truth Blind: Poetic Responses to the Legacy of Ireland’s Religious-run Institutions
Article by Fran Lock in Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry