Laws & Locks

Beginning with the arrival of the Campbell clan in Canada in 1827—“pale scot farmers fording the river, / seated backwards in refusal”—Laws & Locks tracks the history of one family’s struggle with depression, madness, and mental illness. Chad Campbell’s first book of poetry is a brilliant investigation, at once dazzling and unflinching, into the way our predecessors bear on our choices in the present, and how present-day consequences extend backwards in time. A skilled, self-possessed, and clear-eyed poet, Campbell has produced a work of art that, while not quite confessional, transforms the private, dark, often stigmatized regions of his life into powerful poetry.