words by Joseph Blythe
I really do think that I’m someone who reads with their heart before their head. That’s not to say I don’t think about the texts I read – of course I do. Yet, despite my undergraduate degree being in English Literature and my Master’s in Creative Writing, I have never found myself drawn by particular literary movements. I don’t love the Victorians, or modernism, or postmodernism – though I adore the works of T. S. Eliot and Kurt Vonnegut. In fact, I’ve read every Vonnegut novel, most of his short fiction, and most Eliot poems. I was stunned when I found out that the man who taught me about Slaughterhouse-Five at the University of Huddersfield hadn’t read every single Vonnegut novel and short story. Several, but not all. But why would he? It took me a while to learn, but I don’t think everyone feels the necessity to read everything by an author. Some people prefer to read with their head, prefer to read to know things. I daresay that I read more to feel things – and when something like Vonnegut gives me a high, I go back for more, and more, and more, in an addictive way. This is what I have done with the works of Kayleigh Campbell, who is the focus of our first Poem of the Month.
Campbell is one of those poets who manages to sit simplicity and complexity side by side, arm in arm. Casual enjoyers of poetry – those who read a few with a morning cup of tea or evening tumbler of whisky – would be able to pick up any one of Campbell’s works, turn to a random page, and get some enjoyment out of a swift once-over of a couple of poems. Meanwhile, students of Literature and Creative Writing could very easily get a three-thousand-word essay out of two pieces. I find that, in the vast body of literature collectively dubbed the classics, these two poetic states of being do not intertwine, especially for the contemporary reader. But in Campbell’s work, they very much do.
Her chapbook, Keepsake (2019), saw a poetic voice emerging into the world in full-collection form for the first time, and I find a lot to enjoy in this little book – specifically her visceral narration of childbirth in ‘Birthday’ (p. 10). Her first full collection, Matryoshka (2022), advanced her poetic voice in leaps and bounds.
Having completed the work for her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield (where she also taught undergraduate creative writers, and met me – lucky her!) Matryoshka focused solely on women – their minds, their bodies, their experiences – and omitted men from the narrative entirely. Even when it might’ve been easier for her to fold and let the man in, even in a negative form, she remained steadfast, to glaringly wondrous results. I had the privilege of hearing Campbell read from this collection at her launch event in 2022, at the now defunct 'Kafka bar' in Huddersfield. They were simultaneously powerful and vulnerable, and her reading – as always – did these poems incredible justice.
Campbell followed this up with notes on different places (2023), where her list poem voice showed her glaring ability in this form. She can jump between seemingly disconnected images – ‘the melancholy of a 24hr supermarket / the reassurance of a forest’ – while keeping them fluid. Even when bullet points are used, a relatively uncommon feature in a poem (and one, I must admit, I was heavily inspired by in my own writing), Campbell’s work flows through full experiences in simple, precise and vivid images. Images that the reader, more often than not, is trusted to fully explore if they really want to get the most out of it. And if they don’t, and they just want to drink a cup of tea/tumbler of whisky and read a couple of poems, they’ll still find some enjoyment. So is the power of Campbell’s voice.
Enter Sailor’s Blue (2025). In this book, Campbell brings everything together, as if her previous outings existed solely to bring her craft to the point that Sailor’s Blue could be born. The list form, with some of the most varied and intriguing images in her work to date, came straight out of the gates in the first poem, ‘July’:
‘Stuffed animals using exercise
equipment. Wild flowers in a wine bottle’ (p. 9).
Her storytelling, such as the London Prize longlisted ‘Play’ (p. 33), emerges through a tight and economic use of language. There is not a word put to waste in Sailor’s Blue. For me, this collection’s highlight and our poem of the month is ‘The Body Knows’ (p. 31). The voice in this poem is so matter-of-fact in its narration, with each instance and escalation noted in an almost list form. Yes, this unnamed female character ‘notice[s] dripping from the ceiling’, but she sits down and begins working anyway. Then she ‘realise[s] the room [is] filling with water’. Each event, action and reaction is noted as if viewed from a distance by someone entirely disconnected and wholly unaffected by the events of the poem.
This makes sense, given the deluge and flood being narrated is only affecting the poem’s unnamed character. In fact, everyone else’s clothes are dry. I don’t want to speculate the meaning of this poem, mostly because we’ll all conceive vastly different ones and I want your reading of the piece to be your own. However, there is undoubtedly some unseen struggle in this woman’s life, and the rain flooding the car park and bursting through the ceiling is an oppressive and strangling embodiment of this. Is this a distinctly female experience, rendered in poetry? Perhaps, given Campbell’s proficiency and history narrating such stories. Kayleigh herself informed me of her own unsettling feelings toward water, namely due to its power. And water is often associated with words and phrases relating to struggle - “out of my depth” and “drowning in work” being two phrases we probably use and/or hear regularly.
When I spoke to Kayleigh, I asked her a little about the background and inspiration of this poem. Particularly, I was interested in the title, which suggests a physical affliction of some kind, rather than a mental one. Kayleigh informed me that the phrase comes from the TV show Top of the Lake, where a character is talking about the body knowing when something is wrong. So the experience of the woman in the poem relates in some ways to intuition, and our innate way of knowing when something isn’t quite right, even if others can’t see it, and even if we don’t quite understand or fully acknowledge it ourselves.
The most haunting image here, for me, is the ‘blank expressions’ of the people around her. It’s to be assumed they’re colleagues, given the woman is at work, and these are people we have an inherent disconnection from, sometimes. We see these people daily, but do we ever let them truly know us? Perhaps not, and maybe that’s why they can’t see the deluge that is drenching, will soon be drowning, the woman in the poem.
So, enjoy our first poem of the month, Kayleigh Campbell’s ‘The Body Knows’, taken from Sailor’s Blue.
The Body Knows
by Kayleigh Campbell
At first she thought it was normal, that it must’ve
been raining heavily before she left the house.
The water covered the road, level with the curb.
When she needed to cross she had no choice
but to step into it, her canvas shoes soaking
like a sponge. Others did not seem to notice.
When she reached the office she noticed dripping
from the ceiling, figured there must be a leak.
She was responding to emails when she realised
the room was filling with water. She became still
like a rock; the frigid water seeping through
her clothes. She gasped. Her office was basement
level, she looked out to the carpark that was now
underwater, the water now prising its way in
through the windows. She waded out of her office
her heart racing. She alerted those around her,
only to be met with blank expressions and dry clothes.
--
Joseph Blythe is from Yorkshire. He has short stories and poems present or forthcoming from Stand, Pennine Platform, Ink, Sweat and Tears (winning Pick of the Month), London Grip, Angel Exhaust, Allegro Poetry and more. He writes, edits and teaches, and is currently working on a novel about the fallibility of memory. He holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature with Creative Writing and a Master's in Creative Writing. He tweets, Instagrams, and Blueskys @wooperark.