Daniel Ray Campion

Background

Daniel Campion was born on August 23, 1949, in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. He is the son of Raymond Edward and Wilma Frances (Dougherty) Campion.

Education

Campion finished University of Chicago in 1970 with Master of Arts degree, and University of Illinois in 1975 with Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1989. In 1989 he earned doctor's degree in English from the University of Iowa.

Career

Campion worked for Encyclopaedia Britannica as a production editor from 1972 to 1974. 3 years later he signed on with the Follett Publishing Company and became an editor of children’s books, working there till 1978. From there, he moved to Iowa City and served first as a teaching and research assistant at the University of Iowa until 1984.

From that year he has worked as a test specialist for ACT, a developer of academic and professional testing programs.

Campion’s writings are mainly poetry and literary criticism. He has contributed to respected poetry anthologies and journals, including Ascent, Light, Poetry, and The Spirit That Moves Us. He also published a collection of poems, titled Calypso, in 1981.

Campion’s literary criticism has been included in publications such as Literary Magazine Review and Hispanic Journal. With Jim Perlman and Ed Folsom, he edited in 1981 a volume of poems and essays written to and about American poet Walt Whitman - best known for his collection Leaves of Grass—entitled Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song. In 1995 Campion published his study Peter De Vries and Surrealism under the auspices of Bucknell University Press.

Achievements

• Campion has contributed to respected poetry anthologies and journals, including Ascent, Light, Poetry, and The Spirit That Moves Us. Campion has won several Illinois-area awards for his poetry. He received Festival of the Arts Poetry Award from the University of Chicago in 1967, as well as All-Nations Poetry Contest Award from Triton College in River Grove in 1975. 4 years later he won Poetry Award from the Illinois Arts Council in 1979.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Calypso 1981

Views

Quotations: "I write because it seems the most natural thing to do, owing, no doubt, to early encouragement from my parents and teachers. Writing permits me to imagine that I’m in collusion with my surroundings: ‘To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means’ (Whitman); everyday life is a ‘forest of signposts’ awaiting the ‘delirium of interpretation’ (Breton)."

“Writing about Peter De Vries is especially enjoyable for me because he fosters that sense of collusion (e.g., in various arcane literary allusions and verbal associations and by virtue of our shared Chicago background) while, paradoxically, humorously deflating pretensions to inside knowledge (‘What I like to show,’ he told the interviewer Douglas M. Davis, ‘is something perfectly plain: that we’re all absurd variations of one another’). Writing is for alertness.”

Membership

Campion is a member of National Council of Teachers of English, Modern Language Association, Midwest Modern Language Association and Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature.

Connections

Father:

Raymond Edward Campion

Mother:

Wilma Frances (Dougherty) Campion

colleague:

JoAnn E. Castagna