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Erik Campbell

Erik Campbell’s first collection of poems, Arguments for Stillness, was published by Curbstone Press in 2006. His poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, the New Orleans Review, and New Delta Review. Since 2002, he and his wife have lived in Papua, Indonesia.

Author

The Accidental Plagiarist: The Trouble with Originality

Spring 2007 | Essays

There comes a point in many a person’s life when things that Nietzsche said begin to make good sense. This is not necessarily a propitious sign. Understanding or simply identifying with Nietzsche doesn’t typically fill one’s life with joy; it can make a mess of one’s love life, make one speak in intelligent-sounding but laceratingly depressing epigrams, and give one the urge to sign missives as “Dionysus” or “The Damned.”

Shirtless Days: On Living and Writing in the Jungles of Papua

Fall 2005 | Essays

In Papua, Indonesia, fifty miles south of the largest gold mine in the world, a little Muslim girl is staring at me. She’s been at it for two minutes and twenty seconds now; I know this because I’ve been timing her. There she is, not blinking, thoroughly rapt with the unspectacular; she is amazed that I exist.