Nancy Campbell

Nancy Campbell is a poet and non-fiction writer who grew up in the Scottish Borders. A series of residencies with Arctic research institutions between 2010 and 2017 has resulted in many projects responding to environmental concerns including How To Say ‘I Love You’ In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet (winner of the Birgit Skiöld Award 2015) and Disko Bay (shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2016 and the 2017 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize). Carol Ann Duffy describes Disko Bay as ‘a beautiful debut from a deft, dangerous and dazzling new poet writing from the furthest reaches of both history and climate change’.

In 2018 Nancy was appointed the Canal Laureate, a project managed by The Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust. Many of the poems written during this residency were installed along the waterways where they could be seen projected onto warehouses at night, stencilled onto towpaths, or cemented into new fish gates. The poems are collected in Navigations, a pamphlet published by HappenStance Press. 

In 2020 Nancy received the Royal Geographical Society Ness Award for the popularisation of geography through literature. She is currently working on a translation of traditional Greenlandic songs.

In our latest podcast, she talks to Suzannah V. Evans at StAnza, Scotland’s poetry festival.