She spent some 25 years as an actress in Canada and Britain — including five seasons at Ontario’s Stratford Festival — but left that behind to receive her MDiv in 2000 to become a priest. With her fourth book The Sunrise Liturgy (2012, Wipf & Stock), her most theological book to date, she joined the long tradition within the Anglican Church of poet-priests.
The foreword to her new book is written by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
In 2013, the following poem won the $20,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize.
The Antenna
For Mike Endicott
The antenna is a growth not always
functional in all people.
Some can hoist their antenna with
remarkable ease—like greased lightning.
In some it is broken, stuck there in its old winged
fin socket way down under the shiny surface
never to issue forth.
Others make do with a little mobility,
a little reception, a sudden spurt of music
and joy, an aberrant hope.
And some—the crazies,
the fools of God—drive around
or sit or even sleep
with this great thin-as-a-thread
home-cobbled monkey-wrenched filament
teetering above their heads
and picking up the great I AM like
some hacker getting Patmos on his toaster.
And some, with WD40 or jig-a-loo
or repeated attempts to pry the thing up
or chisel at the socket
do not give up on this antenna
because they have heard of how it works
sometimes, how when the nights are clear
and the stars just so and the new moon has all but set,
the distant music of the spheres is transformative
and they believe in the transformation.
It is the antenna they have difficulty believing in.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.