Margo Swiss*

Margo Swiss taught English and Creative Writing at York University for over 35 years, before her retirement in 2018. Her newest poetry collection is Second Gaze (2020, St. Thomas Poetry Series). This book takes its title, she tells us, from Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance: "We know things in their depth only by the second gaze of love." Swiss focuses on this contemplative, spiritual way of looking, enabling us to see things as they truly are.

Since the anticipated launch event at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church in Toronto was blocked because of the pandemic, a video of her reading from the book may be viewed here.

The following poem is from her 2015 collection The Hatching of the Heart (Poiema/Cascade). It is also included in the current issue of Faith Today.

Easter Conversations

“they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here but is risen: remember how he spoke unto you when he was yet in Galilee”----------------------------------------------Luke 24. 5-6; 10-11

Jesus Christ knows flesh,
bodies speaking, always did
do what his Father said
His mother’s hard labour first,
in time his own: walked his talk, then
was crossed, tombed, shut up for good
dead (it was said)
until
He heard his Father say, rise
be born again this day.

“It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, the mother of James, and the other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.”

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Margo Swiss: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Marianne Bluger

Marianne Bluger (1945―2005) is a Canadian poet who authored eleven collections, including The Eternities (2005, St. Thomas Poetry Series). Her father was a Jewish Holocaust survivor, and her first husband a Zen master. She was influenced by both, and passionate about her own Anglican, Christian faith.

She studied under Louis Dudek at McGill University, and maintained a friendship with him throughout their lives. She received the Archibald Lampman Award in 1993, for her collection Summer Grass (Brick Books).

Her obituary says, “Bluger co-founded Christians Against Apartheid. She worked for many years with great dedication both in secret and openly to help bring down the evil regime of Apartheid in South Africa. The church network that was able to do so much to topple the oppressors, and the example of the church women of South Africa who suffered so much, taught her the most important lesson of her life: that Christ will never fail the one who loves and trusts Him.”

She administered the Canadian Writers’ Foundation for twenty five years, assisting noteworthy Canadian writers with financial needs. She also co-founded the Tabitha Foundation to assist those in Cambodia.

The Choirmaster

After the practice
when the choir is gone
in the stilly twilit
stained glass gloom

at the windy organ
in the country church
an old dame with arthritic hands
plays on and on…

a fugue of Bach
its rounded sounds
in perfect tune
fused line on line
pour forth and there
throbbing in the hallowed air
hangs the whole blessed empyrean

her pure heart’s gift to the Holy One

This poem appeared in the Margo Swiss anthology Poetry As Liturgy (St. Thomas Poetry Series).

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Margo Swiss

Margo Swiss is a Toronto poet who has published two collections, Crossword: A Woman's Narrative, and her new book The Hatching of the Heart (Poiema Poetry Series/Cascade Books). It has been my privilege to work with Margo in bringing this book to publication. She is also the editor of the anthology Poetry As Liturgy (2007). She and her husband, David Kent, founded the St. Thomas Poetry Series in 1996—an important imprint for the growth of Canadian Christian poetry.

She has published essays on John Donne and John Milton, and teaches Humanities and Creative Writing at York University.

Living Water
(John 4:10)

Light rain—
soft, light rain rains.
Living water reigns.

Water
whether wanted
in storm

or warmed
still we are
watered

drenched
sometimes drowse
as roots

earthbound
feed, so we
night-long long

to rise,
to rain
to fall as

light rain—
soft, light rain rains.
Living water reigns.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Margo Swiss also contributed a poem to my blog The 55 Project, which consists of poems inspired by the 55th chapter of Isaiah.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Margo Swiss: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Susan McCaslin

Susan McCaslin is a British Columbia poet, who taught at Douglas College from 1984 to 2007. She is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently, Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press), and this year's The Disarmed Heart (St. Thomas Poetry Series) which features poems about peace and war.

The following poem first appeared in Christianity & Literature. Susan also included it in Poetry And Spiritual Practice, an anthology she edited, which includes poems by such fine Canadian poets as Richard Greene, John Terpstra, Margo Swiss, Hannah Main-van der Kamp and George Whipple.

A Midrash on the Kingdom Prayer

better known as the Lord's Prayer
or the Our Father. It obviously addresses

someone more affectionate than a storm god,
someone more like the parent who listened.

The Kingdom Prayer is not about a kingdom.
It is about a presence on a lawn.

It is a prayer about the balancing of rhythms,
what we hear and what we don't hear.

Heaven is within, invisible while
the Name is expressed, pressed out.

These are both true, as if to say,
Holy what we see, holy what we don't see.

Then we get to forgiveness or reciprocity.
Everything forgiving everything is the kingdom.

It has no head of state.
Lead us not into temptation and deliver us are one.

There are always the holes to step into.
the scrabble and the helpers.

The delivering is active, like birth.
The kingdom is a child's kite winding in.

All you have to do is imagine it
and here it is. The presence now.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, was born in Italy, and grew up in Montreal, Baltimore, and Toronto. His early poetry was significantly influenced by Pablo Neruda. He became an Augustinian Brother in 1984, and was ordained in 1990; he stepped back from direct involvement with literary pursuits, for a time, and served as a friar with a parish in Brampton, Ontario. Di Cicco has published well over a dozen books of poetry including his 2009 collection Names of Blessing. From 2004 to 2009 he served as Toronto's second Poet Laureate, and currently teaches at the University of Toronto.

I selected one of his poems to be the 2009 poetry winner at the Canadian Church Press Awards. The following poem is from the anthology Poetry As Liturgy which was edited by Margo Swiss for the St. Thomas Poetry Series (2007).

from Poetry and Liturgy

God is a musician too, and all mediums are
arbitrary to Him, a blind man tapping with a cane
is tapping the poem of His prayer, for it is only the sentiment
that means anything to God; not the medium, it
is like water; if it will not flow here, it will flow there.
What matters to God is the flow of sentiment;
He does not know what to do with art forms; so that
artists go blind, and musicians go deaf —
but the sentiment goes on; and it is the poem of His hymn;
everything sings, even without song.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Pier Giorgio Di Cicco: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

John Reibetanz

John Reibetanz was born in New York City in 1944, but has made his home in Toronto. He has taught for many years at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College. In 2004 he won the Petra Kenny Poetry Competition.

In 2012 Rufus Books published Péter Cserháti: hidden treasures in woodcarving, sculpture and sketches, which combines images of Cserháti's art with ekphrastic poems by John Reibetanz in a beautiful limited-editon book.

The following poem is from his seventh collection Transformations (2006); the poem first appeared in Southern Review, and was also included in the anthology Poetry as Liturgy which was edited by Margo Swiss.

Wells Cathedral, Afloat

Light spreads it maplike on the water’s glass-topped table,
--sleeks the seamless join of sky and stone.
----Light’s ripples whisper to your soul
------this is the real cathedral.

Where liquid air laps liquid arches that support
--a dove-grey haze of ashlar, buttresses
----flutter their wings and God’s house sails,
------both ark and Ararat.

The master mason and his fellows carved a vision:
--these wells its harbour, hooded from Atlantic winds
----by mortared walls that bishops and deans
------put their solid faith in.

Masons knew stone too well to trust their heaven to it.
--Earth-anchored, blind to light, pried from its bed
----with pain, the Judas stone betrayed
------their backs and drank their blood.

They raised that pile as template for this floating prayer.
--Here no roof argues with the stars, no tower
----shadows the houses of the poor.
------The walls are holy water.

Within, the font refills itself and overflows,
--flooding the crypt where sun-scaled rainbows spawn.
----Rooted tendrils of a true vine
------thread the Jesse window.

Knock, and the door will open, softly taking your hand.
--To enter, you must give up all you have,
----blow your last breath back to land,
------let your lips close on heaven.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca