Jill Peláez Baumgaertner*

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner is a Chicago poet with seven collections to her name. She is also an influential editor — serving first as poetry editor for The Cresset, then for First Things, and finally for The Christian Century — a role she is still fulfilling. She is Professor of English Emerita at Wheaton College, where she also served as Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies.

Her new poetry book is a unique collection — a partnership, really, between Baumgertner and the Romanian sculptor Liviu Mocan. The sculptures, paired throughout the book with Baumgaerner’s poems, clearly stand on their own, and the poems work independently of the images. Even so, when they are considered together the experience is enriched.

Liviu says, “"When my hands touch the marble or the granite or the wood… I touch God's hands. God's hands are there waiting for me… This is how, resculpting His sculptures, I understand, day by day, how inadequate I am. I am a sculptor, I am a sculpture."

Jill says, “We want our book to tell the story that begins in radiance and beauty, progressed through sin to the fall, and leads to revelation and redemption through the vast and tender love of Christ.” This is, in my view, what they have accomplished.

The new book The Shapes are Real (Cascade Books, 2025) is indeed a partnership — and I am privileged to have served as editor. Philip Yancey wrote an introduction to the work of Liviu Mocan for the book, with an afterword by myself, entitled "Polishing Mirrors For Heaven" which also appears in the McMaster Journal of Theology & Ministry. The following poem is from The Shapes are Real.

The book that reads you
------brass
------120 x 60 x 30 cm

sees you; you standing there
trying to read its opaque pages;
stiff, unbendable they seem
yet stacked with abundance
of breath between leaves and brass
that seem almost flexible..

It eyes you. Over and over
through its hieroglyphs, the tiny eyes
see all that you are, all that you
should be, all that you will be.
They are not meaning―but point
to meaning, harbingers, reflectors,

like the light from the moon―
not sun but sunlight still―
reflected yet substantial,
until the morning erases
dark illuminations and unveils
glory―
revelation the patina

covering sheen in the skin
of mercy.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Jill Peláez Baumgaertner: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Jonathan Chan

Jonathan Chan is a Singapore poet and translator whose second book bright sorrow has just appeared from Landmark Books. Born in Manhattan to a Malaysian father and a South Korean mother, educated at Cambridge and Yale, he was raised in Singapore and has returned there after his years at university. His first collection going home (Landmark Books, 2022). was a finalist for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2024. Part of what he explores in that book is the sense of what home is when a single locale may or may not be the home one is going to.

He is Managing Editor for the poetry archive Poetry.sg. His poetry is widely published; I personally have selected his poems for Ekstasis, and for Poems For Ephesians, as well as for a forthcoming anthology of Christmas poems in the Poiema Poetry Series.

Jonathan Chan has said, “matters of faith are integral and inherent to my writing” — while Christian Wiman has said, “Jonathan Chan’s poems are distinctively musical, acutely observed, and existentially engaged at the deepest level. They are bracing to discover.”

The following poem is from bright sorrow.

eternity

after Marilynne Robinson

and so the old man said
eternity is a thing we have

no hope of understanding.
things happen the way

that they do. a note follows another
in a song. a song is itself and

not another. a song is a song
itself. eternity holds space for

all these songs. for a song is
like a life, resounding in a kind

of tune. lives are what they were
and have been. lives are not merely

every worst thing. a mother prays
for her scoundrel son to be taken

up into heaven. Lila thinks this
an injustice to the scoundrels

with no mothers. people try
to get by. people are good

by their own lights. people take
all the courage that they have

to be good. for in eternity,
to eternity, eternity is just

a thing.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Cameron Brooks

Cameron Brooks is a South Dakota poet, who lives in Sioux Falls. He earned his MA in theological studies from Princeton Seminary, and more-recently an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University, where he had Scott Cairns, Jennifer Maier, and Mischa Willett as professors. He is representative of a new generation of Christian poets who captures the universal through the particularity of place and of his own experience.

His first poetry collection, Forbearance, has just appeared as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. I am pleased to have been able to work with Cameron Brooks as his editor.

Bruce Beasley calls this new book: “a gorgeously written evocation and meditation on life lived among the prairies, orchards, flooded farms, ‘gaunt silo[s]’ of South Dakota’s High Plains.” And says that “Brooks loves words and their glorious mouthfeels as much as he loves the world itself…”

The following poem is from Forbearance.

The Mower and the Nun

The man who mows the ditch
between the strips of interstate
found it worthwhile to leave us
patches of wild sunflowers
every several miles.
Even at eighty-per-hour
you can't miss ‘em: sunny thumbprints
pressed against the paper
bag browns of late September.
I will never thank him.

And I will never thank the nun
I saw watering her brittle yard
with a hose—in full garb!
That strange religious habit
of the celibate salt of this dearth.
Doesn't she know October
is coming and November is coming
and December comes only to steal
and kill and destroy? She knows
life, life abundantly.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Marjorie Maddox*

Marjorie Maddox is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University, in Pennsylvania. To enumerate just some of her achievements, count the 17 collections of poetry she has published — awards received including the Yellowglen Prize, an Illumination Book Awards Medal, the Foley Poetry Prize, and several chapbook awards — as well as the more than 700 poems, stories, and essays she’s published in journals and anthologies.

Her new book Seeing Things (2025, Wildhouse Publishing) will appear on February 28th. Amid the advance praise for this poetry collection, Jeanne Murray Walker has said, “It’s surely one of the best books I have read this year.” It is a very personal book where Marjorie Maddox finds herself between her mother’s advancing dementia and her daughter’s depression, with troubling memories of her own.

The following poem is a tribute from one friend to another, both of whom are fine poets, one of whom died far too young of inflammatory breast cancer. I have had the privilege of editing poetry collections for both Marjorie Maddox (True, False, None of the Above) and Anya Krugovoy Silver (Second Bloom) as part of the Poiema Poetry Series. This poem first appeared in Presence, and is from Marjorie’s new book Seeing Things.

Photo with Bald Heads

— for Anya Krugovoy Silver and Noah Silver

Or nearly; the baby fuzz is hers,
compliments of the cancer we seldom speak,
though she does—loudly and often—but not now.
Instead, on this matte finish, she calmly cradles
the red-faced infant, his small mouth open,
life from the still-living pulsing.
His soft spot already
sprouts strands she’ll touch
and touch again. See
how she stares out at us
or at God, just this side of the pictureperfect
smile she owns
in the bright flash
of her dark room. See how
she embraces, with her
sleep-deprived, wideawake
eyes, much more
than the omniscient
one-eyed camera
could ever claim. Only she
can reveal her See
this is me there, here, now,
grabbing my own ever after,
the camera clicks and subtle shifts
that follow: her liturgy not of beginnings
or ends, but persistence, holy continuation
into our space of now, brimming
just so with this immortal moment of joy.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Marjorie Maddox: first post.

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.

Richard Osler*

Richard Osler (1951—2024) is a Canadian poet who began his writing career as a journalist with The Financial Post newspaper in 1975, and through the ‘80s was a regular panellist on the weekly "Business Column" portion of the national CBC radio program, Morningside.

As a poet, Richard was one to primarily point to the work of others through such activities as his long-running blog Recovering Words, and one who dedicated his time to leading poetry writing workshops and poetry as prayer retreats. His first full-length collection Hyaena Season was published by Quattro Books in 2016.

One connection I had with Richard was selecting, and working with him on, one of his poems for the outdoor art exhibits of Imago’s project Crossings which appeared in downtown and midtown Toronto throughout Easter 2022. His last e-mail to me came less than a month before he was taken by cancer in late October. He said, “These last 16 weeks since diagnosis [have been] the most meaningful of my life.”

He says in a poem from his new book:
----Give death a face a voice directed me.
----My own face now wise with the news
----of death inside of me. If I walk
----to the mirror and look is it me I see
----or death now come out from hiding
----inside my face?

Richard died just hours after he had attended an online launch for his final poetry collection, What Holiness Will I Bring? (2024, Frontenac House). In describing Richard’s insistence on revealing to us this “art of knowing / and being known” Ilya Kaminsky said “This insistence is generosity. What do we learn? We learn to live passionately, intently, with a fire of clarifying search. We learn poetry is a spiritual discipline, the kind in which the world is our friend.”

Many years ago, Richard sent me a copy of his privately printed chapbook Not Yet (2006). Here, I will share one of the poems from that book.

Remnants

Faith is this day:
Waves gather up and fall.
Sun pours in from the east.
Tethered boats move
out on the bay. The breeze knows
my face. The brown dog belongs
to its stick, my throwing, the water
that holds them both up
and her sad moaning when I stop.

I have faith in this breathing
and writing and the crow’s black caw.
These geese left with three goslings
from April’s twelve. The smaller stick
chewed and now in pieces at my feet.
The volcano’s black stones
lost in a mountain’s last breath.
The driftwood logs left on the beach.
My own life, coming apart
into the smaller things —
this day
holding my faith in the promise
of another.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Richard Osler: first post.

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.

John Leax*

John Leax (1943—2024), known to his friends as Jack, is one of the pioneers of contemporary poetry written from a place of deep evangelical faith. The first of his six poetry collections, Reaching into Silence, was published by Harold Shaw Publishers in 1974. He also wrote one novel Nightwatch (1989), and several books of nonfiction. His 1993 book Grace Is Where I Live was expanded and republished with Wordfarm in 2004.

Jack Leax was also a professor of English and poet-in-residence at Houghton College in upstate New York from 1968 until 2009. He passed away from cancer on September 1st.

The following poem is from his poetry collection Remembering Jesus: Sonnets and Songs (2014, Poiema/Cascade). I am honoured to have worked with Jack as the editor for this, his final book.

Recognition

John 2:14-15
Luke 2:48

There was, I thought, something about the man
Familiar, an image pressed on the coin
Of memory. But slow, afraid, I’d join
The fallen under toppled tables, I ran.
I’m sure, now, I needn’t have. His harsh whip
Sought the rash of thieving profiteers
Hawking oxen. Sheep, and pigeons, their sneers
Mocking country pilgrims come to worship.

I crept back when breath returned. Around
Him stood the Pharisees. His zealousness
For the Father’s house brought back a scene. Years
Ago I watched a quiet boy confound
The elders. As then, I saw his brightness
Was a sword. His mother’s love would end in tears.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about John Leax: first post, second post.

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.

Mary of Nazareth

Mary is the earthly mother of Jesus, who by the power of the Holy Spirit, though she was still a virgin, conceived God’s own son. The story in Luke’s account begins with Zacharias — a man in the priestly line — being told by the angel Gabriel that he and his wife, Elizabeth, will have a child in their old age. This child was to be the one to go before the coming of the Christ to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.

When Gabriel announces to Mary that she is to become the mother of the Messiah, he also reveals that her cousin Elizabeth is miraculously six-months-pregnant.

The following canticle is an exclamation of praise (here in the New King James Version) which was spoken by Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, whom she was visiting in the Judean hill country. It is known as “The Magnificat,” which is Latin for “magnifies” as spoken in the opening line.

The Magnificat

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant;
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me,
And holy is His name.
And His mercy is on those who fear Him
From generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich He has sent away empty.
He has helped His servant Israel,
In remembrance of His mercy,
As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and to his seed forever.

(For those who ponder, like I have —
----How did this navigate its way
----into Luke’s account?
— check out my poem “Magnificat” from my poetry collection Poiema.)

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926) is an Austrian poet born in Prague. Although he is not a Christian, he did receive an intensely Catholic upbringing through his mother. This provided him with Christian imagery and stories, which significantly influenced his concepts of the spiritual life as he created his own mythological landscape.

When Rike refers to God he has his own pantheistic ideas in mind — although for a reader with Christian understanding of who God is, the interpretation might often remain orthodox.

Rainer Maria Rilke is known for his lyrical intensity — particularly in his Duino Elegies which begins, Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic / orders? And even if one of them pressed me / suddenly to his heart: I’d be consumed / in his stronger existence…

In my own poem “Response to Rilke” I have my angelic narrator reply,
----There are few angels---to firsthand hear your cries
--------for some circle the earth
----------------turning away terrors you’ve no knowledge of…
----& though I once was called---to oversee your sojourn
----it was never mine---to turn you left or right
---------------------------or hold you in my embrace…

So many translations of Rilke’s poems appear in journals, anthologies, books, and on the internet, including by such noteworthy poets as Seamus Heaney. Since, like most of you, I don’t speak German, I must content myself with English translations, comparing one with another, and hanging onto the versions that grip me most.

I have been arrested by Rilke’s poem “Autumn” (“Herbst” in German) from The Book of Images many times in various translations. The subtleties from one translation to another deepens my appreciation of the original poem.

Susan McLean translates the opening couplet as
----The leaves are falling, falling from on high,
----As if far gardens withered in the sky.

And Robert Klein Engler has the third line read:
----to teeter with the grace of letting go.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The following beautiful version is a translation by Charles L. Cingolani.

Autumn

The leaves fall, as from afar,
as if withered in heaven's remote gardens;
it is with reluctance that they fall.

And during the nights weighty earth falls
from all the stars into solitude.

All of us fall. This hand falls here.
And look at others: All of them fall.

But there is One, Who holds what falls
with infinite tenderness in His hands.

Even though this is my favourite translation, I appreciate some alternate ways certain lines are carried into English.

Edward Snow renders the final couplet as:
----And yet there is One who holds this falling
----with infinite softness in his hands.

And J.B. Leishman translates it:
----And yet there’s One whose gently-holding hands
----This universal falling can’t fall through.

Despite Rilke’s fragmented acceptance of a Biblical concept of God, his poem does draw us toward a beautiful truth.

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.

Luke Harvey

Luke Harvey is a poet who describes himself as “living in the interstate / between two worlds” — that is, in Chickamauga, Georgia, just ten miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He works as a high school teacher in that other world. He also writes for and works on the poetry editorial panel for The Rabbit Room.

Harvey’s debut poetry collection Let’s Call It Home has just appeared as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. I am honoured to have worked with Luke in editing this fine book for publication.

The English poet Malcolm Guite has written of this new collection, “Time and again these poems do what poetry does best: they transfigure the familiar and so reveal something of its meaning: …from the mystery of the earthworm rising towards the rain, to the family who find that feeding a child pureed peas is an entirely sacramental act, in poem after poem Luke Harvey gives us a glimpse of what George Herbert called ‘Heaven in Ordinary’.”

The following poem is from Let’s Call It Home.

After the Murder

The crux of the matter is what to do.
with the body now crumbled

in your hands. Logic says dismember
it, scrubbing beneath your fingernails

to rinse away any condemning
evidence of having been at the scene

of the slaughter, then bury the axe.
Or maybe you play it cool, act

like it’s nothing new to hold a carcass
in your cupped palms, like really this

is something you do on a weekly basis,
nonchalant as a Sunday stroll. Of course,

you wouldn’t be here in the first place
if you were one to listen to logic,

so disregard that. You’re holding the flesh
and blood of another. This is no time for logic.

Pray for forgiveness and devour it,
wiping first one cheek, then the other.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Andrew Lansdown*

Andrew Lansdown is a significant Australian poet. His new collection, The Farewell Suites has just been published by Cascade Books as part of the Poiema Poetry Series.

Fransesca Stewart wrote of his Abundance: New & Selected Poems (2020, Poiema/Cascade) in Westerly Magazine from the University of Western Australia,

-----“Abundance offers a rich and varied view of the world through
-----Lansdown’s eyes. By noticing the miraculous and the mundane,
-----and with an ever-present awareness of the passing of time,
-----these poems pay attention to ordinary life and bring a captivating
-----intensity of presence and emotion. Lansdown… by turning the poetic
-----gaze upon himself… displays acute self-awareness and disarming
-----vulnerability in observing his mind, emotions and reactions to life.”

With his new poetry collection, Andrew Lansdown becomes even more publicly vulnerable. Here he carries us through all the heartache of losing loved ones — the death of three brothers, his wife’s miscarriage, and the final farewell to a dearly loved mother and father. For the rest of us, who have experienced varying degrees of the same thing — or who soon will — The Farewell Suites is an eloquent reminder that in this we are not alone.

I am honoured to have worked with Andrew as his editor for both of these books.

Lamplight

The lamp of the Lord—
that’s how the word of the Lord
describes the spirit of a man.

And looking at my father
sunken into his deathbed
I sense and see the truth of it.

Now his spirit has returned
(a little ruined, a lot redeemed)
to the Lord who gave it,

how dark it is, his body,
how utterly given over
to bleakness and blackness,

its lamplight all extinguished.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Andrew Lansdown: first post, second post.

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.

Barbara Crooker*

Barbara Crooker is a Pennsylvania poet whose poems have been well-received by many who know the artform well. They’ve been featured many times on The Writer’s Almanac as read by Garrison Keillor — and for The Slowdown podcast, read by then U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

I was pleased to see Barbara, along with other friends from our tight-knit poetry community, at the Festival of Faith and Writing in April. She gave me a copy of her tenth book, Slow Wreckage which had just appeared from Grayson Books. Her other recent books include: Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh Press) and The Book of Kells (Poiema/Cascade) which was honoured as the Best Poetry Book of 2018 from Poetry by the Sea.

She has won numerous other awards including the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and she is a sixty-one time nominee for the Pushcart Prize.

The following poem first appeared in my web-journal Poems For Ephesians — and is from Slow Wreckage.

Sonnet From The Ephesians

----- — Ephesians 1:16

I do not cease to give thanks, especially in November
even as we lose an hour of light, drawing
the curtains at 4:30 to keep out the cold. To remember
you are dust seems appropriate now. Crows are cawing
black elegies in the bare trees. Just past the Day of the Dead,
and I’m thankful for every friend who has blessed
my life, gold coins in a wooden chest. Who said
no man is an island? We’re all peninsulas, I guess,
joined to the mainland, part of the shore. We’re the sticks
in the bundle that can’t be broken. Even if
it doesn’t seem that way, the bickering of politics,
the blather on the nightly news. Maybe we speak in hieroglyphs,
unclear, always missing the mark? So let me be plain.
I’m grateful for the days of sun. I’m grateful for the rain.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Barbara Crooker: first post, second post, third post.

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.

J.C. Scharl

Jane Clark Scharl is a poet, essayist, and playwright, who lives with her husband and children in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, Michigan. Her new poetry collection, Ponds (2024, Cascade Books) has just appeared as part of the Poiema Poetry Series.

Ponds is her first book which would be considered a collection of poems. She has also published a verse-play Sonnez Les Matines (2023, Wiseblood Books) which imagines three significant figures ― John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, and François Rabelais ― as students together in Paris in the 1520s. They discover a dead body, and as they investigate the murder, each must probe deep questions on his own.

J.C. Scharl and Brian Brown, in conjunction with the Anselm Society, have also recently edited the essay collection Why We Create (2023, Square Halo). This book is an examination by numerous thinkers of how we have been created to create.

I am honoured to have worked with Jane Scharl as the editor of Ponds. For those of you attending the Festival of Faith & Writing, in Grand Rapids, Michigan this April (and those who live nearby) I invite you to attend the Poiema Poetry Series reception on Thursday, April 11th at 7:30. Jane Clark Scharl will be one of our many readers.

In her Plough article “Poetry at Home” from last October, she points to the very first recorded words from Adam when God presented him with his wife, and points out that they are written as poetry (Genesis 2:23). Scharl says, “Poetry should be nourished beside the hearth, not in the lecture hall. When we invite poetry into our homes, we make our family life more abundant, but we also help poetry itself grow richer and more beautiful.” Perhaps the best argument to support her premise is the following poem, which is from Ponds.

To My Unborn Child

There is a story of how God,
before anything else existed, was everything.
And one day he looked out and saw
that everything was him, and he knew
that if he wanted to make some other thing,
first he’d have to vacate
some of what is, to make room, you see.
And so (the story goes) he breathed
in a mighty breath and with it
he pulled in a little of himself,
leaving just the smallest hollow
surrounded by the everything
that is him. Then, into
the hollow, he breathed, but kept himself
held back, just a little, and in
that empty space he made all Creation.

I wish I knew, dear little one,
if the story is true, and if
now he sits like this, hands cupped
around the hollow at his center
that is filling up with something
that is not entirely him;
if he too feels it shift and kick,
and what it is he wonders then.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

George Herbert*

George Herbert (1593–1633) is an English poet, priest, and orator, who was a member of Parliament briefly during 1624 and 1625.

The two most influential of the seventeenth century English metaphysical poets are George Herbert and John Donne. These poets are significant to the legacy of Christian poetry in the English language, and their influences stretches into other languages as well. Some of the other metaphysical poets include Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, Richard Crashaw, and Joseph Beaumont.

The work of these poets has influenced my own poetry, and the work of so many of the other poets I admire. The very first post here at Kingdom Poets, from back in 2010, is one about George Herbert.

One of the poems in my forthcoming collection Pride Be Not Death (& Other Poems) is a response to Herbert’s poem “Love (3),” another comes from his “Perirrhanterium,” another is after “Denials,” and a fourth arises from a line in the following Herbert poem.

The Cross

---------What is this strange and uncouth thing?
To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,
Until I had some place, where I might sing,
---------And serve thee; and not only I,
But all my wealth and family might combine
To set thy honour up, as our design.
---------And then when after much delay,
Much wrestling, many a combat, this dear end,
So much desired, is giv’n, to take away
---------My power to serve thee; to unbend
All my abilities, my designs confound,
And lay my threat’nings bleeding on the ground.
---------One ague dwelleth in my bones,
Another in my soul (the memory
What I would do for thee, if once my groans
---------Could be allowed for harmony):
I am in all a weak disabled thing,
Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting.
---------Besides, things sort not to my will,
Ev’n when my will doth study thy renown:
Thou turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,
---------Taking me up to throw me down:
So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,
I am to grief alive, to them as dead.
---------To have my aim, and yet to be
Further from it then when I bent my bow;
To make my hopes my torture, and the fee
---------Of all my woes another woe,
Is in the midst of delicates to need,
And ev’n in Paradise to be a weed.
---------Ah my dear Father, ease my smart!
These contrarieties crush me: these crosse actions
Do wind a rope about, and cut my heart:
---------And yet since these thy contradictions
Are properly a crosse felt by the Sonne,
With but four words, my words, Thy will be done.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about George Herbert: first post, second post, third post.

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.

Susan Cowger*

Susan Cowger is a poet and artist living in Cheney, Washington, and is the author of two poetry collections: Slender Warble (2020, Poiema/Cascade) and her new book Hawk & Songbird.

What makes this publication particularly sweet, is what the poet has gone through to get here. While the rest of us were anxious about how the pandemic might change our lives, Susan Cowger received her diagnosis — blood cancer: multiple myeloma — an incurable disease. She says,
-----“Like a fledgling careening from the nest, my mind shrilled a frenzy
-----of questions: whywhywhy? No answer. From vertebral collapse to
-----cancer to brain tumor to brain abscess to stem cell transplant,
-----one after the other, I did not find the answer to why. I found
-----Presence… [an] awareness of God I could almost touch: strength
-----embodied standing over me; an ever-watchful eye keeping vigil
-----whose single glance could dash away fear; silent invisible
-----protection, care, love … certainty. God’s Presence alone makes
-----the horrific journey worth every minute.”

Although twenty-five-hundred miles away, I walked with Susan, as one of her many companions in prayer, and am grateful she now has the reasonable hope “that maintenance medicine might keep [her] well enough to eventually die of something else.” I have also been able to partner with her as the editor for both of her full-length poetry books.

Susan Cowger will be one of our readers at the Poiema Poetry Series reception at the Festival of Faith & Writing (on Thursday, April 11th at 7:30) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The following poem is from Hawk & Songbird (2024, Poiema/Cascade).

She Says You Get What You Get

It’s windy on the porch
She props a gimpy leg on a wooden chair
exposes it to sun----She says you get what you get

Ever mumbling to God for attention----something like
look at me look at me and oh wow there it is
another bruise blooming just below the knee

She turns her face to the sky----and draws
a patient breath----In prayer-like motion
she smears salve over the parch of skin
a pauper’s salvation

where pity for a sick thing takes on something akin to
gladness for some attention----Despite the defect
now it’s hard to hate
what she loves----The broken parts
she hands back to God

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Susan Cowger: first post.

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.

Laurie Klein*

Laurie Klein is a poet of the Pacific Northwest, the author of Where the Sky Opens (2015) and of the brand new book, House of 49 Doors ― both from The Poiema Poetry Series.

Her name comes up frequently as the writer of the praise chorus “I Love You, Lord” which has been ubiquitous in church circles for years. Its familiarity led guitarist Phil Keaggy to record it as the only cover-tune on his beautiful instrumental album The Wind and the Wheat (1987, Maranatha Music).

When she was featured at Abbey of the Arts, Laurie Klein said, “For me, entering the presence of the sacred means embracing mystery. And I adore mystery. Poems I love evoke — and expose — irresistible gaps: within my understanding, between the lines themselves, betwixt soul and Truth’s unerring glance.”

As Klein’s editor, for both of her full-length collections, I am delighted to see the arrival of this ambitious new book. It is a memoir of the unspeakable, that takes on a family’s disturbing sorrow with remarkable innocence, beauty, and hope.

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, of The Christian Century, says of House of 49 Doors, “The voice in these remarkable poems belongs to a girl, a spy, a recorder of daydreams and memories of a home and a war-torn, beloved uncle, whose grisly suicide was a family secret. These poems are handprints left in cement. Once you pick up this book, you will be unable to put it down.”

The following poem is from House of 49 Doors.

Words which are not

enough — despite our regrets
and longings — mound,
musty and swept together
like fallen leaves, crackling
with sorrow nearly

unspeakable. Where is solace
meant to settle cleanly as dew?
A life shatters, its hunger
for wholeness hopefully
drifting toward Mystery,

luring us all nearer
the pure, original spark —
a vitality deeper than

we dare believe. Prayers may
falter, but know this:

though language flails
and has too often failed us,
our questions spiral,
eventually intersect
the beguiling Love

that summoned this universe,
which, from our first
shuddering breath,
clear through forever, rekindles
the sacred flint, blazons our way.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Laurie Klein: first post.

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.

Pamela Mordecai

Pamela Mordecai is a Jamaican-born poet, who migrated to Canada in 1993. She has authored eight collections of poetry, five children’s books, a novel, and a collection of short fiction. A video collection of her poetry was produced in 2015 at Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland. A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems appeared from New Directions in 2022.

She often writes in Jamaican Creole, particularly for her New Testament trilogy , which has been written and published in reverse order. Dionne Brand said of the first section de book of Joseph (2022), "Pamela Mordecai is a wonder, a teller and a burnisher, working the syntax, rhetorical devices and pragmatics of Jamaican language to its perfection."

The second book is de book of Mary: a performance poem (2015), and the final book de man: a performance poem, written as an eyewitness account of Christ’s crucifixion, appeared in 1995.

I met Pamela Mordecai at a literary event presented by Imago at the University of Toronto in September. She was accompanied by her friend the St. Lucian poet Jane King.

Martin Mordecai, Pamela’s husband of 54 years ― a writer, TV producer, civil servant, and diplomat ― passed away in 2021. Pamela Mordecai now lives in Toronto.

The following poem was recently reprinted in the Humber Literary Review and comes from de book of Mary.

Archangel Explains

Archangel, him smile wide, take a next
sip, give out, “Do not fret, holy one.
For de Spirit shall seize you. De power
of De-One-Who-Run-Things take you in.
Too besides, dem will call de pikni
you going bear ‘Son of God’.
El Shaddai going give him David throne
for David is him forefather long time aback.
And him going reign over de tribe
of Jacob for all time to come,
and him kingdom going last forever.
It never going end.
Not just dat. Hear dis news!
Your cousin Eliza who bad mind
people take to make sport and call mule
she making baby too – gone six month

already never mind she well old,
for Jehovah, him do what him please.”
As for whether is El Shaddai send
me to you, if you think to yourself,
you will know if is so.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was first suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

C.S. Lewis*

C.S. Lewis (1898—1963) is one of the most influential Christian writers of all time. He taught English at Oxford (1925—1954) and then at Cambridge (1954—1963), and was a close friend and significant encourager to J.R.R. Tolkien.

Known to his friends as Jack, Lewis published more than thirty works, which have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold millions of copies. Ten years ago, this month, on the anniversary of his death, a memorial stone honouring him was unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

As we approach November 29th (this Wednesday), his birthday, the podcast Pints with Jack, along with “over thirty Lewis societies and content creators” will be marking for the first time “C.S. Lewis Reading Day.” Watch the promotional video, and then, if you are so inclined, listen to the Pints With Jack podcast from when they interviewed me about my book Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis. (Poiema/Cascade).

The following poem is available in his book Poems (1964, Harcourt, Inc.)

Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about C.S. Lewis: first post, second post.

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.

Claude Wilkinson

Claude Wilkinson is a poet, painter, and writer, who has just published his fifth poetry collection: Soon Done with the Crosses (2023). It is the latest volume from Cascade’s Poiema Poetry Series. I am honoured to have worked with Claude as his editor for this new book.

His previous poetry collections include Reading the Earth (1998, Michigan State), winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award ― Joy in the Morning (2004, LSU Press), for which he was nominated for an American Book Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize ― Marvelous Light (2018, Stephen F. Austin State University Press) ― and World Without End (2020, Slant). He is also the winner of the Whiting Award for Poetry.

He grew up in rural Mississippi, but has been influenced by many other regions and landscapes. In a recent interview with Fare Forward he said, “[M]y way of looking through our world is, without doubt, shaped by my early, enjoyable experiences in a rural, welcoming landscape. I believe it’s one of the ways that my spirit became attuned to God and what little I know of the universe.” Later, when asked about challenges for writing about nature today, he said, “To properly appreciate nature, we must have reverence for it and foremost for its Creator.”

Wilkinson identifies his favourite poets as Derek Walcott and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Robert Cording has said that Claude Wilkinson’s poetry “brings art and nature together—the artfulness here not in its faithful copying of nature, but in its evocation of reality in all its fullness.”

The following is the opening poem in Soon Done with the Crosses.

Birds That Alight on Faith

Help me also to believe in
the leanest saplings and twigs,
in something as flimsy
as a honeysuckle bloom,
as Theseus did, in my imagining, when
he tackled the Minotaur, or Icarus
when he flew momentarily
into the face of the sun.

Help in the way I’ve seen
pelicans and swans skim
mutely onto a lake,
thinking it solid as stone,
the way Saint Peter did
when he took his first steps
on stormy Gennesaret
before hearing the strife
cursing around his feet.

With only that thimbleful
of aerial surety, help me
to grasp those things
which never collapse
under the heft of this life.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Sally Ito*

Sally Ito is a poet and writer who has four poetry collections, including her new book Heart’s Hydrography (2022, Turnstone). She is an adjunct Professor of English at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.

Rowan Williams (the former Archbishop of Canterbury) has written about this collection, “Winter landscapes, water landscapes, the landscapes of family love and frustration, and of the soul’s seasons―all these are mapped by Sally Ito with deep compassion and rich tactile imagery. Everyday perceptions made radiant.”

Sally has recently teamed up with Sarah Klassen and Joanne Epp to translate poetry from Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg for Burl Horniachek’s anthology To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry (2023, Poiema/Cascade).

The following poem Sally Ito wrote for me when I was seeking poetry related to the Biblical Stations of the Cross for Imago’s Toronto Arts Exhibition “Crossings: A Journey to Easter” which was presented in 2022. It is also the final poem in Heart’s Hydrography.

The Cross Speaks

I was a tree once, and of one body
that grew upward into the sky
and downward into the soil.

Many were the seasons of my life
until it ended with the ax.

Only the human would make out of my death
something out of the death of their God,
my dead body carried by him
who will die for them.

Still, I will lift him, and become the tree I once was
and I will bear him, as he bore me
and be planted once more
in the dark soil of my Creator’s nurturing.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Sally Ito: first post.

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.

John Slater*

John Slater is a Trappist monk at the Abbey of the Genesee in New York State. His most recent book is Beyond Measure: The Poetics of the Image in Bernard of Clairvaux (2020, Cistercian Publications). That book is written under the name of Isaac Slater, which is the name he’s known by at the Abbey. His poetry collections have been published under his birth name ― John Slater.

The following poem was presented through a video reading by Slater, to accompany the first station in the Crossings Toronto Arts Exhibition which was presented by Imago in central Toronto from March 2 to April 14, 2022. The sixteen poems, and sixteen accompanying pieces of visual art appear in the Crossings Catalogue.

Among the sixteen Canadian poets included in Crossings Toronto are, Sarah Klassen, John Terpstra, D.S. Martin, and Sally Ito.

I encourage readers to seek out a copy, and to use this resource for devotional reflections throughout Lent and Easter for many years to come.

Entry to Jerusalem (King of Peace)

Somber Palm
Sunday all
over the
world—streets
and churches
empty.

*

He comes! they
spill out from
the City
hosanna!
scramble up
palm trees hack
off branches
wrestle from
cloaks to fling
at his feet
joyous o-
vation for
the people’s
champion
head down meek
riding a
donkey—led
into the
ring—his face
set like flint.

*

The children
swept up in
their parents’
ecstasy
dart thru crowd
cut palm wave
branches shout
hosanna!
this strange king
like them with
no standing.

*

Before the
crown of thorns
purple robe
torture—be-
comes his own
parody
of Herod
and Pilate
So you are
a king? no
followers
defending
his kingdom
by force he
shall banish
chariot
and horse the
warrior’s
bow king of
suffering
king of peace.

*

Monks process
into an
empty church
palm fronds poke
discreetly
from choir stalls
spray from vase
near altar
the chant less
exultant
than serene
and yet still
carpeting
the Master’s
path with song.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about John Slater: first post.

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.