The Library of Ice: Reviews

It's one month since the publication of The Library of Ice, and I'm grateful that the book has received incredibly perceptive and positive reviews. My thanks to all the reviewers, and a special shout out to Patrick Barkham for selecting The Library of Ice as one of the Best Books of 2018 in the nature category in The Guardian. Here's a round up of reviews available online - click on the link to read in full.

• "A refreshing lack of romanticism." Gavin Francis in The Guardian
• "Campbell ... has invented a new kind of time-travel-writing. She is, unquestionably, one of our brightest stars." Horatio Clare in The Spectator
• "At the end of her wanderings, which are simply but beautifully related, Ms Campbell returns to her few belongings in storage in London. Nothing much remains; treasures have broken; all is in flux, like the heaving, disappearing icebergs she has left behind, with their fragile cargo of human remains.' Anonymous, reviewed with Christopher Pinney's The Waterless Sea in The Economist
• "An intellectual omnivore..." Barbara Kiser in Nature
• "Campbell’s book puts a personal slant on the conservation of texts and languages, on the importance of saving both centuries of human endeavor and the landscapes that inspired them." Anna Souter in Hyperallergic
• "In this journey, she has joined the dots between nations who don’t always recognise their primary interdependence." Sally Moss in ClimateCultures
• "an essential read for anyone interested in the mutable, multi-faceted qualities of ice". Dani Redd in The Island Review

Advance copies of 'The Library of Ice"

Book bloggers, book reviewers and journalists are invited to request their advance copies of The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate via NetGalley. Available now!

Disko Bay - news and reviews

• Recently The Poetry School invited me to write a guest post for their blog about a poem from Disko Bay, describing how it moved from first drafts to publication. My account of the writing process behind 'The Survivors' can be read here.

Some reviews of Disko Bay have been published in the last few weeks. Here's a selection:

• Theophilus Kwek considers the book in a round-up of titles nominated for the Forward Prizes (Felix Dennis Prize for First Collection) in The London Magazine: 'spare, supple lines serve as indispensable guides in the unfamiliar visual and mythic landscape'. (Read the full review here)

• Martyn Crucefix reviews my collection for his excellent poetry blog (well worth following for his forthcoming reviews of other books on the shortlist): 'eco-poetry without shed loads of landscape description'. (Read the full review here)

Many thanks to both poets for the time they have taken to read and respond to my work.

Disko Bay - "hints of longing and foreboding"

Bookslut has been a favourite litblog of mine since it was founded fourteen years ago. So my gratitude to find a review of Disko Bay by poet Kali Lightfoot in the March/April issue was tempered by some sadness to read that the next issue, out in May, will be the last. (Happily, all the archived reviews and interviews will be accessible even after the Bookslut stops posting.)

Autumn reading: features, reviews and poems

• I reviewed Tricks of the Trade: Confessions of a Bookbinder by Jamie Kamph for the Times Literary Supplement
• I interviewed Finnish artist Kristian Krokfors for a feature in Printmaking Today to coincide with his major retrospective at Bukowski’s, Helsinki 
• I wrote about the artist Richard Long RA's new print series, The Spike Island Tapes, also in Printmaking Today
• My poems The night hunter, Summer song and Giving up on capitalism appeared in an issue of Moving Worlds (a journal of transcultural writings) dedicated to The Postcolonial Arctic.

Summer reading: new essays and reviews

Filming Ófærð

• I wrote about the experience of sharing a small Icelandic town with a film crew working on the Nordic Noir drama Ófærð ('Trapped') for the Times Literary Supplement ('Freelance', 19 June issue or available online to subscribers). 
• A feature on Emma Stibbon RA's drawings of polar ice (current exhibition at The Polar Museum, Scott Polar Research Institute) has been published on the Royal Academy Blog. (You can read a lengthier assessment of Stibbon's work over at The Island Review.)
• I reviewed Confessions of a Comma Queen, a riotous memoir by The New Yorker's copy editor Mary Norris, for Editing Matters the journal of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.
• A review of Printmaking on the Edge - the history of St Michael's print workshop in St John's, Newfoundland - is out in the summer issue of Printmaking Today. (Lovely book, available here.)