"This was done during the Gulf War. I found myself listening to the news and thinking about all the destruction and waste. What I did was to use six poems ... The title poem refers to a dreadful event that happened in the Thames estuary [the illegal disposal of hospital waste]: one of the contractors hadn't bothered to burn any of it, and they just tipped it into the river, so you got all of the worse things you can think of coming out of a hospital. It seemed to me a terrible comment on where we were going ... I took various phrases or words or syllables from the text and buried them in the dark margins, as echoes of things ... I took bits of metal that described the grid of the book, the metal plates used for images, the usually unseen nails used to fix them, and worn-out type (laid on its side and made up to type high), and I printed from them; they were like randomised elements of wastage. In different ways it suggested implosion, explosion, fire, and waste; it was an analogy for the waste that was going on in the war ... There were three thunderbolts from Jove visited upon people: premonition, admonition, and retribution. [In the book] they turn from simple arrows of metal looking like rules, to something more complex, like scorpions or F16s, things that are visiting fire and destruction. It's a destructive book, but it's also very beautiful. It's ... about the problem of strange and beautiful things flowering from extremely difficult and violent circumstances, which is one of life's truths."--Ken Campbell, from The word returned.
Subject Terms:
Campbell, Ken, 1939- -- Publisher. | Waste products. | War. | Artists' books -- Great Britain.