Thom Gunn in Conversation with James Campbell

by James Campbell

The book contains an extended interview, a career sketch, and an updated version of Hagstrom and Bixby's comprehensive 1979 bibliography. It also contains several pages of quotations from Gunn's critics. Also included is Gunn's recent poem, Clean Clothes: a Soldier's Song. "This volume gives us an informative, friendly 42 page Q&A between Gunn and critic, biographer, and TLS eminence James Campbell, conducted in January 1999, after Gunn had completed what's his new book, Boss Cupid ... As usual, Gunn comes across as admirable: reserved about his private life, thoughtful about his principles. He's someone who's quite devoted to nightlife, to sex of course, to fun, and yet he's articulated a liveable moral stringency, and an entirely appealing way of connecting art to ethical choice ... It's dangerous to take anyone's life as exemplary - that must be one of the differences between people and poems - but Gunn's in some ways can seem so." Stephen Burt, 'Nightlife and Morality', Poetry Review, Summer, 2000

114 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2000

About the author

James Campbell is a Scottish writer. He left school at the age of fifteen to become an apprentice printer. After hitchhiking through Europe, Israel and North Africa, he studied to gain acceptance to the University of Edinburgh (1974–78). On graduating, he immediately became editor of the New Edinburgh Review (1978–82). His first book, Invisible Country: A Journey Through Scotland, was published in 1984. Two years later, Campbell published Gate Fever, “based on a year’s acquaintance with the prisoners and staff of Lewes Prison’s C Wing”.

Campbell's other books include Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin (1991, 2021), Paris Interzone (1994), Just Go Down to the Road: A Memoir of Trouble and Travel (2022). He worked for many years at the Times Literary Supplement and wrote the column 'J.C.' A collection of these appeared as NB by J.C.: A Walk Through the Times Literary Supplement in 2023.