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Spring Theory
Wanda Campbell’s sixth poetry collection, Spring Theory, meets the chaos of the current times with forms that are fractured and familiar in poems of lament and love, hunger and hope. It moves from exploring the darkness of fall to capturing spring’s rejuvenating light. Between these contrasting seasons are three ekphrastic poems inspired by Alex Colville’s images of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, prose poem tributes to twelve Canadian writers, and the heart of the collection, the lost sonnets of “Dementia Diary Down Under.” These 26 poems compare Alzheimer’s to the topsy-turvy world of Australia and subject the sonnet to scattering, loss and erasure to echo what happens to a brain with this degenerative illness. Nearly a million Canadians and 55 million worldwide suffer from dementia and the poet attempts to understand the unpredictable experiences of her own aging relatives with empathy and insight. In exploring the challenges faced by the “sandwich generation,” Campbell employs a variety of from free verse to found poetry and reimagined sonnets. With curiosity and candor, she finds striking comparisons in the world around caring for elderly parents and canoeing, Colville’s crow and a landing plane, Covid cures and hummingbirds, war and Easter eggs, a Botticelli painting and the loves of her life, and in the poem selected as a Montreal International Poetry Prize finalist that inspired the title of the collection.
100 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2025
About the author
Wanda Campbell
20 books3 followersWanda Campbell’s early childhood years were spent in her birthplace, Andhra Pradesh, South India. After the age of ten, she grew up on Canadian land bordering sea. Learning from living amid conversations of converses in East and West, in English and Telegu and in extreme poverty and exquisite beauty, Wanda shaped a unique aesthetic.
Without television, beginning with a big red book of fairy tales, Wanda journeyed deep into the world of words through books. Winter and Frost, two influential high-school teachers aspired her to write. Mrs. Winter took her to her first poetry reading. Alden Nowlan’s reading started her long apprenticeship in contemporary poetics. Mr. Frost took her art class to New York City to see world great art masterpieces. Female artists; biblical stories and rhythms; literary classics; fine, faithful writers like Avison, Levertov, Eliot and O’Connor; musical influences like The Proclaimers, Leonard Cohen, Ami Mann and Cold Play—particularly lyrics that read like poetry, using “the best words in the best order” (Coleridge’s definition of poetry)—shape and inspire her. Studies with Alistair MacLeod taught her about being a good person, as well as a good writer.
She began writing early—letters, poems and little novels. When her own words were put into print, Wanda Campbell felt like a real writer.
Without television, beginning with a big red book of fairy tales, Wanda journeyed deep into the world of words through books. Winter and Frost, two influential high-school teachers aspired her to write. Mrs. Winter took her to her first poetry reading. Alden Nowlan’s reading started her long apprenticeship in contemporary poetics. Mr. Frost took her art class to New York City to see world great art masterpieces. Female artists; biblical stories and rhythms; literary classics; fine, faithful writers like Avison, Levertov, Eliot and O’Connor; musical influences like The Proclaimers, Leonard Cohen, Ami Mann and Cold Play—particularly lyrics that read like poetry, using “the best words in the best order” (Coleridge’s definition of poetry)—shape and inspire her. Studies with Alistair MacLeod taught her about being a good person, as well as a good writer.
She began writing early—letters, poems and little novels. When her own words were put into print, Wanda Campbell felt like a real writer.
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