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Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit explores disability, storytelling, and the process of mythologising trauma. Jen Campbell writes of Victorian circus and folklore, deep seas and dark forests, discussing her own relationship with hospitals — both as a disabled person, and as an adult reflecting on childhood while going through IVF.
Please, Do Not Touch This Exhibit is Jen Campbell's second collection. Her first book-length collection, The Girl Aquarium (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), was shortlisted for the poetry category of the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2019 and was a semifinalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 (Best Poetry category).
"These are poems which land the reader in the middle of a fantastical ocean and float them to shore on the precision and inventiveness of their imagery; these are poems that create their own mythspaces on the unstable edges of disability and chronic illness, poems which conjure new ways of articulating things about the experience of living in a body which might usually feel beyond language."—Andrew McMillan, leading UK poet, author of pandemonium (2021)
‘The poems are bold and assured. A delicate balance of wonder, playfulness and horrific revelation.’ – Michel Faber, internationally renowned novelist, author of The Crimson Petal and the White
‘I was so affected by these intimate, wildly imaginative and elegant poems exploring disability and illness across personal, contemporary and historical landscapes. The longer sequence ‘The Hospital is Not a Place’ is especially impressive, while many of these poems draw you in so close it feels genuinely immersive.’ – Will Mackie, New Writing North (New & Recent Poetry from the North)
‘Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit powerfully reviews poet Jen’s Campbell’s life and experience of medicine. It shares a poetic vision that reclaims language to redress her experience of objectification at the hands of medical professionals ... There is a juxtaposition of imagery and of voice within and between poems, that arrive at a wonderful sense of wholeness. The poems continue to please as you digest and dwell on them.’ – Toni Hurford, Disability Arts Online
‘Reading this poetry collection is like a walk into Campbell’s past of hospital operations, rejoining her in the present filled with fertility clinic waiting rooms and years spent shielding herself during the ongoing COVID pandemic … But, like all great poetry, Campbell’s collection contains universal themes about what it means to exist in the one body we are each given, of what it means to be human.’ – Kendra Winchester, booktuber and reviewer, (Read This Book)
‘Campbell, an English poet, was born with a dysplasia syndrome of the fingers nine months after the Chernobyl disaster rained radioactive isotopes across Europe. The poems in this poignant collection approach the effects of the syndrome with frankness, irony, anger, and good humor, showing an equable alertness to the metaphorical bounty in her experience.’ – David Woo, Literary Hub, on Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
‘I found it exceptionally moving … a well-written, powerful collection – one I’d highly, highly recommend … One of my favourite collections of the year.’ – Katie Lumsden, Books and Things, on Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
‘Her almost magical, whimsical metaphors and writing style make ... difficult topics a lot more accessible to read about. To say I personally related to this collection, would be the understatement of the century. It’s certainly in my top 3 poetry collections of all time, and the highest that poetry has ever made it on my Yearly Favourites-list.’ - The Fiction Fox (Year in Review: Favourite Books of 2023), on Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
‘Filled with haunting imageries, irony and pared down language, Jen Campbell’s collection Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit examines the difficult questions about the nature and origin of disability […] Imaginative and full of honesty and urgency, Campbell delves into one’s hidden fears living with the unreconciled truth of disabilities through figurative language.’ – Jennifer Wong, Under the Radar
‘Yet for [all] the collection’s engagement with fantasy and the other, the poems remain controlled – the voice is confident and compelling with strict forms. Lines are tight and words held. The ideas within the poems change and morph, cross borders, but the poems themselves form boxes, like an exhibition space. In doing this, Campbell manages to shift and move between the world of fairy tale and the real world, approaching the subject of medical practice and disability from multiple directions.’ – SK Grout, The Alchemy Spoon
12 Anatomy of the Sea
15 Dear [______] [1]
16 The Hospital Is Not My House
19 Dear [______] [2]
20 The Hospital Is Not a Place for Bodies
23 Dear [______] [3]
24 For a While, the House Is Green
25 The House of Mirrors Is Owned by the Freak Show
26 The Body Festival
27 Ghost-Whisperer
28 Sometimes, The House Is Made of Glass
29 Dear [______] [4]
30 Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
31 Technical Rehearsal
32 First Thing, I Am a Forest
33 Dear [______] [5]
34 Alopecia
37 My Brain Is a Sleeping Thing
38 We Must Admit, the House Is Pink
39 Fell
40 For Some Reason, I Can’t Stop Writing About Lighthouses
41 In My Dream, the House Is Dark
42 When I Revisit This Room, I Want to Leave Again
45 Poem as Bad Doctor
46 Somehow, the House Is Orange
47 The Five Stages of IVF
48 When It Arrives, It Weighs 5kg
49 The Hospital Is Not Big Enough for the Two of Us
52 Trying to Gain Entry into The Republic of Motherhood
53 This Is Just to Say
54 When I Go to the Woods
55 The Weekend the Garden Reflected Our House
56 The Trees Are Part of the Process
57 Now, The House Is Red
58 This Doesn’t Have a Name Yet
60 The House Is All the Colours, All at Once
61 Common Side Effects