David Campos

David Campos (Poetry) | Fresno, CA

Booking Fee:

Negotiable

Will Travel:

Anywhere

Contact:

campospoet_at_gmail.com

Website:

http://www.davidcampos.com

David Campos, a CantoMundo Fellow, is the author of Furious Dusk (University of Notre Dame 2015) which won the 2014 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared The American Poetry Review, Huizache, Luna Luna, and Miramar among many others. He graduated from CSU Fresno with an degree in English – English Education in 2010 and earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performance Arts from UC Riverside in 2013. While at UC Riverside, he served as a poetry editor for CRATE literary magazine before becoming its Editor-n-Chief. His one act play The Princes(s) of Shields St. was selected to have a staged reading for the Play Festival. He’s also worked in film as a writer for the short film Names, the first full production by UC Riverside’s Theatre Department. More recently he was a story editor for the documentary short ECOLOGY. From 2009-11 he was the cohost of the literary radio show Pákatelas on KFCF 88.1 FM Fresno. Currently, he teaches English at Fresno City College, where he is a Puente Mentor. He also teaches at College of the Sequoias. He lives in Fresno with his wife and two cats Killer and Einstein.

Books

Furious Dusk (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015). Poetry.


Press & Reviews

“David Campos writes tenderly and with compassion about fathers, sons, and the way we become men. He writes with an original voice and fire about race, identity, and nation. He writes lyrics that skirt tightropes of impossible, beautiful contradictions. David is a Fresno poet, an American poet, a Chicano poet, and more. This is an extraordinary book of grace, I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
—Chris Abani, author of Sanctificum and Hands Washing Water

“A monster debut collection that refuses to go unnoticed, the same way one cannot divert their eyes from an anatomical dissection. In five deftly crafted sections, we are given an unflinching view at the poet’s own innards; from wrestling with eating disorders, to father-son relations, body image, and marriage, the tendons and ligaments of a life are exposed, and the red muscle of reality is left jutting toward you, the reader. Campos’s poetry is a physical experience, a glimmering mirror that forces us to call out our own dark secrets, to be accountable and ‘take comfort that we’re alive as animals.’ From the same literary stomping grounds and fertile groves that first produced the fearless and prophetic Andrés Montoya himself—emerges this new and necessary breed of luminary voice.”
—Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Mañana Means Heaven

“This is a fearless poetics—no heroes, no myth-making, no jazzy lingo games. David Campos is intent on one inner phrase: ‘I will become the fire.’ I applaud David’s first book. It is relentless in wrestling the darkness, reminiscent in some ways of Delmore Schwartz, Joan Larkin, and Victor Martinez. A tour de force, a rare heart of raw light.”
—Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate


Love what we do? Take a second to support us on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!