Girl Aquarium

Jen Campbell grew up by the sea. She is a bestselling author and award-winning poet. Her most recent books include a short story collection, The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night, and a series of children’s picture books about a book-loving dragon called Franklin. She won the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in 2013, received an Eric Gregory Award in 2016, is Vlogger in Residence for the Poetry Book Society, and was a judge of the Forward Prize in 2018. She talks about books, fairy tales and disfigurement at youtube.com/jenvcampbell. Her poetry pamphlet The Hungry Ghost Festival was published by The Rialto in 2012. Her first book-length collection, The Girl Aquarium, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2019, and is shortlisted for the poetry category of the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2019. She lives in London.

Poetry of innocence and wonder. Poetry of darkness and deformation. The poems about girlhood experiences are daringly original.

• I10 Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge11 #112 Girl Lunar13 The Exorcism of the North Sea14 Memories of Your Sister in a Full Body Wetsuit16 Appendix17 Movement18 The Girl Aquarium20 Half-full21 Etymology22 What he did can be found in Genesis23 Luminiferous Aether24 I wish to tell you body parts27 The Magician’s Daughter28 The Chicken, the Egg and My Sister29 The Patron Saints of AnimalsII32 Hero33 Miss Eliza’s Skeleton Factory34 The Doll Hospital36 The Bear37 The Angel of the North38 Swimmin39 Birdlasses40 Netted42 Merlasses43 Small Infinities45 A Song of Herself46 Angel Metal47 On Crucifixion48 The Art of Saving Other People49 Orange Brain. Flowered Brain.III52 Hello, Dark54 Butterfly Dresses at the Westminster Aquarium (1880)55 What the Bearded Lady Told Me56 I Heard She Had a Strawberry Heart57 The Glow-worm Chasers58 Kitchen59 How to Weigh Nothing60 In Fields She Wasn’t Scarin Crows61 On Display at the Hunterian Museum62 The Woman’s Private Looking-glass64 The Day We Ran Away from the Circus71 Biographical note