Lauren Camp

I moved to New Mexico decades ago on a whim, entranced by the high desert spaciousness and the fidelity of the light. I haven’t tired of what there is to see and learn here. This landscape teaches me patience and attention. My descriptions grow from a desire to do justice to my perceptions. How can I write it in a way that is true—and new? I like the task of looking and listening, the effort of receiving every detail as a challenge. 

Allen Ginsberg, in his Mind Writing Slogans, says, “Notice what you notice,” a statement I share frequently with my students. Truly, these are words to write by. No one has to see everything; we are individuals, and our attentions go where they go. In the natural world, and here in the high desert’s wide coat of light or immense dark, what I want to capture could be something slight. I love that I can enter a new day or a new page and experience something else, or the same thing in a new way. How will I describe it? Well, that’s the joy of this craft… that’s the way I deepen into my life.