Author, poet and literature scholar Dr. Joseph Campana held a two-day lecture and poetry reading series Sept. 23-24 as part of the ETSU Celebrates Creative Writing Fall Residency.
Campana is the Alan Dugald McKillop Professor of English at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is the author of three collections of poetry: “The Book of Faces,” “The Book of Life” and “Natural selections.” Campana has also published a scholarly study entitled “The Pain of Reformation: Spenser, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Masculinity.”
The ETSU Celebrates Creative Writing program welcomed Campana by hosting a poetry reading of his newest publication, “The Book of Life” Monday, Sept. 23 at 4 p.m.
“What is a poet?” asked Campana. “A poet is a maker. That is the etymology of the word. Throughout the tradition we honor the makers. We lament the makers. We imagine ourselves as poets and artisans. Poetry retains, even in its most digital forms, the sense that it is a species of creation.”
At noon on Tuesday, Sept. 24, Campana built upon this idea at his “Shakespeare’s Curse” lecture discussion. This lecture focused primarily on how the use of the “curse” word was influential in Shakespearean literature as well as the human language. In addition, Campana spoke at ETSU’s student-run Creative Writing following this lecture at Burleson Hall.
“My discussion today is a different idea of Shakespeare’s curse,” opened Campana. “His curse is the kind of thought that language is meant not only to create but also to destroy. That poetry is not only what ‘makes,’ but perhaps, more profoundly, more instructively, what ‘breaks’ the world.”
Campana spoke on how language is supposed to do more than just represent and tell a story.
“We’re more often inclined to think in positive registers; more often looking for blessings than curses,” said Campana. “Our tendency as humans is that we do not tend to think of language as holding a purpose. That certain negative register seemed worth exploring, and I wanted to draw more attention to that aspect.”
Both events were held in the Reese Museum and sponsored by ETSU Celebrate’s Creative Writing and the Department of Literature and Language.
