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.

Scott Cairns*

Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri, and is presently facilitating the transition of the Seattle Pacific University low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing to Whitworth University.

He is the author of ten poetry collections, the most recent of which is Lacunae (2023, Iron Pen/Paraclete Press). The word “lacuna” means a blank space, missing part, or empty hollow — and Cairns uses the word in various contexts, such as in the introductory poem, “Recuperating Lacunae”:

-----No, not so much---------------an emptiness, never yet
-----an emptiness.------------------Think, rather, a discrete

-----cove proving still---------------to offer—and ever
-----to offer—what one-------------cannot, can never,

-----comprehend…

He has long been a poet striving to describe the indescribable, and slow to accept common theological interpretations as the whole truth.

Robert Cording recently wrote, “For Cairns, language is a form of faith, faith that reaches out towards what is inexhaustible and uncontainable, and faith that trusts words can be a means of coming nearer to what necessarily remains out of reach… Lacunae is the work of a faithful and faith-filled man unafraid of letting his ego be seared, of living in time that continues ‘ticking in perplexity.’”

The following poem is from Cairn’s new poetry collection, Lacunae.

Implicative Lacunae
-----…It was like
-----A new knowledge of reality.
-------------------------— Stevens

Entering the clearing, he knew
That he had heard it, the single
note expanding beyond the reach
of any single note, as if,
finally, his dim ideas
about things showed themselves to be
stick figures failing to evince
the fullness of the body. She
said to him so, at long last you
have heard it, yes? He stood just there
at the clearing’s edge, daring not
to speak. He closed his eyes that he
might better listen, and the note
became a space like the clearing
into which all that could be sung
found dwelling, and he became
like a man without a doctrine,
became a man intent on praise,
a man whose freedom would ever
expand, would ever reach toward.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Scott Cairns: 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.

Karen An-hwei Lee*

Karen An-hwei Lee is an American poet whose fifth collection has just appeared from Poiema/Cascade. What makes Duress unique is how throughout the collection Lee makes subtle references to what we all experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. As you read you’ll encounter cellist Yo-Yo Ma playing an impromptu concert for those lined up to get their vaccine (“Songs of Comfort”), and passing mentions of mask wearing, video conferencing, and pandemic isolation. Duress is, however, not so much about the pandemic as it is of human experience during our season of pandemic.

Her care-filled yet prolific writing of these poems has produced this timely follow-up to Rose is a Verb: Neo-Georgics (Slant, 2021). Scott Cairns has written, “With formal elegance and visionary comprehension, the poems of Duress prove witness to the immensity occasioned in the small, and the particularity made manifest in the endless expanse before us.”

When I return to this collection years from now, I expect to find I will not only be saying, “Yes, that’s what it was like,” but the poems will continue to speak to me of what life is like. Duress will transcend the pandemic, as most good poetry transcends the times in which it is written. Karen An-hwei Lee is Provost and Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois.

I am honoured to have served as the editor for Duress from which the following poem is taken.

On Quarantine Dreams

I wake in the morning, facing the risk
of viral air wafting in open spaces
such as the market, gas station, or dog park,
daring to linger at the rows of fat peaches,
in no haste to choose one with a gloved
finger, a paper mask filtering the aroma
of ripening fruit palmed in my right hand.
The daily hours slow to the rate of dough
rising in an oiled bowl, the floured wood
petitioning silently for another round
of dimpling and kneading, for dinner rolls
instead of sourdough. Praying for beloveds
while making bread, I shape, proof, and sugar
kindred spirits with pleasure. In my dreams,
the loaves of bread fly all over the globe
like satellites radioing the old solace of toast,
the fierce reassurance of butterflies winging
south for winter in the mountains, their wings
fiery and crisp as buttered rye, oblivious
to the violence inflicted by an invisible
coronavirus wreaking havoc on civilization,
a virus so small, it is barely even a living thing.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Karen An-hwei Lee: 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.

Brian Volck

Brian Volck seems to lead two lives ― at least two lives. In one manifestation he is a pediatrician who has served at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, has provided pediatric care at the Indian Health Service hospital on the Navajo Reservation, and brought medical teams to Central America.

He is also a writer whose poetry collection Flesh Becomes Word (2013) was published by Dos Madras Press. Scott Cairns has said of this book, “These are poems of deep humility, of wide and deep learning, of abiding and strenuous faith—and pervasive joy.”

Volck’s passions for writing and healthcare come together in his published essays, in Reclaiming the Body: Christians and the Faithful Use of Medicine (2006, Brazos Press) which he co-wrote with Joel Shuman, and his memoir Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words (2016, Cascade Books).

He received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University, his MD from Washington University in St. Louis, and is currently completing a Master’s degree in theology from St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. All of these connections now draw him to divide his time between Cincinnati, his home in Baltimore, and the landscape he loves in the American Southwest.

The following poem is from Flesh Becomes Word.

Having Crossed the Sea

(Exodus 15)

I have seen them, dead along the shore,
their bloated faces still ripe with hate.
And there was one I stopped at to kick—
kick him fiercely and hard in the face
the way they kicked my now dead husband
who wept at making bricks without straw—
but I found no joy in what I did.

Yesterday, we had cause to rejoice,
seeing Israel’s enemies crushed
between walls of leveling water
cast on them by our great God’s right hand.
But as we sang praises to heaven
in sight of their still floating corpses,
the cloud column swelled, grew darker, and
the rain fell: softly at first, and then
in great salt drops, so like tears, I wept
to learn one might mourn enemy dead
who were, after all, God’s children, too.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Brian Volck: 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.

Scott Cairns*

Scott Cairns is the author of nine poetry collections ― the most recent include Anaphora (2019), Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015), and Idiot Psalms (2014) which were all published by Paraclete Press. In 2007 his spiritual memoir Short Trip to the Edge (Harper San Francisco) first appeared; Greek and Romanian editions have since been published, as well as an expanded English edition. He is now the Director of the Seattle Pacific University Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

In a recent interview with Saint Katherine Review, Scott Cairns said, “[I]n order to see anything, you have to really look. You have to pour over the words. You have to pour over the landscape. You have to ‘attend’, as we’re often invited to do during the liturgy. So in my own vocation as a poet, I have to be a lover of language and a truster of language that through the Holy Spirit it will lead me into seeing something I hadn’t anticipated. A vocation is not so much something we’re called to do to serve God. We’re called into a vocation, and in that vocation, if we pursue it with due diligence, that’s where the Lord blesses us further. So it’s not something we do for him so much as it is what he gives us to do that’s worthwhile.”

The following poem is from his new collection, Anaphora.

Sin En Route to Lent

Beneath his breath
the zealot says
thank God I am
not like this man,
the Pharisee
who thought to scorn
the publican.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Scott Cairns: first post, second post, fourth 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.

Mischa Willett

Mischa Willett teaches English at Seattle Pacific University, where his specialty is nineteenth century poetics. He has taught at Washington University and Northwest University, and has served as Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Tuebingen in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. His poems have appeared in Books & Culture, Christian Century and Grain, and in his 2013 chapbook, Lunatic.

Scott Cairns has said that, "Mischa Willett has a music all his own, albeit a music informed by years of his attending to the inexhaustible songs that comprise both world poetry and sacred text."

Willett's first full-length poetry collection, Phases, is the newest book in the Poiema Poetry Series. I am pleased to have assisted him as the editor for this collection. Many poems in Phases interact with the classical period or are set in Rome. It is, therefore, note-worthy that this summer he and poet Jennifer Maier will be leading a study trip to Rome with Seattle Pacific University.

Pastoral

Let us not overlook, he says looking out over
us from the lectern like a shepherd
with a crook of words bent on folding
us back into our pen, or penning
us back to our fold, the stupidity
and defenselessness of sheep.
We bleat: in this analogy, who
are we? He proceeds. Goats, you
see, can handle themselves. Horns
and hoofs, cranial helmets they ram
full tilt into posts, or other goats. But sheep
mind you, sheep have no homing device,
which is why stories begin with a lost one;
they’re even known to head toward danger
—oh look, a wolf! Let’s check it out!— in dumb
allegiance to the interesting, which I find
interesting, and think: how to amend
our sheepish ways? But he, to drive
home both the point and oh ye,
sighs it’s beyond you; beyond me.

Phases is available from Cascade Books.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Scott Cairns*

Scott Cairns is the 2014 winner of the Denise Levertov Prize. Earlier this year his seventh poetry book, Idiot Psalms, was published by Paraclete Press. He is the Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair in English at the University of Missouri. Every June, on the Greek island of Thasos he directs an annual 4-week writing workshop. Newly available is Parable—a CD of Scott Cairns reading his poetry—recorded by Roy Salmond in Vancouver.

B.H. Fairchild has said that Cairns "is steadily making himself indispensable to the richness and breadth of contemporary poetry, an ascent confirmed both beautifully and movingly in Idiot Psalms."

The following poem first appeared in Poetry.

Idiot Psalm 3
—a psalm of Isaak, whispered mid the Philistines, beneath the breath

Master both invisible and notoriously
---------slow to act, should You incline to fix
---------Your generous attentions for the moment
---------to the narrow scent of this our appointed
---------tedium, should you—once our kindly
---------secretary has duly noted which of us
---------is feigning presence, and which excused, which unexcused,
---------You may be entertained to hear how much we find to say
---------about so little. Among these other mediocrities,
---------Your mediocre servant gets a glimpse of how
---------his slow and meager worship might appear
---------from where you endlessly attend our dreariness.
Holy One, forgive, forgo and, if You will, fend off
---------from this my heart the sense that I am drowning here
---------amid the motions, the discussions, the several
---------questions endlessly recast, our paper ballots.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Scott Cairns: first post, third post, fourth post.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Gregory of Nazianus

Gregory of Nazianus (circa 325—389) was Archbishop of Constantinople. He is known today as a significant theologian for his emphasis on the Trinity. He was a prolific writer—composing, some have said, as many as 30,000 verses; if this is true most of them have been lost.

Earlier this year, when I asked Scott Cairns, who were the significant poets among the early church fathers— which he had alluded to during a question period at the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, Michigan— he wrote on a slip of paper the names of Ephrem of Edessa (who I blogged about last December), Gregory of Nazianus, and Simeon the New Theologian.

It's been said, "St Gregory is one of the most open and self-revealing of the Fathers of the Church, and his poetry is remarkable for its personal character..."

Christ The Creator

Friends and fellow-workers they!
Day with night, and night with day!
Night descendeth, and the while
Thou dost call a halt to toil;
Bidding labour pause and rest,
Lulling care in weary breast.
When from rest again set free,
Sweet our work if done for Thee;
And we haste from night away,
All to hail the endless day,—
Day, most happy and most bright,
Ne'er to end in darksome night.

So bid sleep with gentle wing
O'er mine eyes her shadow fling;
Nor let dumb repose too long
Seal my tongue, nor hush my song;
Which, responsive I would raise,
To the angels' song of praise.

Thus, with holy thoughts of Thee,
Let my bed familiar be,
Lest ignoble dreams betray
The misdoings of the day ;
Lest my brain with phantoms teem,
Breeding trouble in my dream.
Rather let my soul take wing,
Free from thrall of sense, and sing:
To the Father and the Son,
And the Holy Spirit, One ;
Glory, honour, power to Thee!
Be to all eternity. Amen.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Gregory of Nazianus: 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.

Brad Davis

Brad Davis is the winner of the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and the International Arts Movement Poetry Prize. He has lived in the west — British Columbia and Washington State — seven different states in the east, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has also taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and at Eastern Connecticut State University.

He is the author of Opening King David, published by Wipf & Stock in 2011. It is a series of 150 poems which respond to, or leap from, thoughts expressed in the 150 biblical psalms. These poems previously appeared in four separate volumes, published by Antrim House Publishers. Although these poems often speak of faith, this is not a collection of devotional verse. Opening King David shows us Davis on his journey, with fellow-travelers — including his close friend Bill who experiences his wife’s slow dying through the time these poems were written. Scott Cairns has said of this book, “Brad Davis has pored over both the scriptures and our common experience...that we might glimpse how every challenge, every adversity might be met with grace.”

Reasons I Write

Those who assume they have no one
to whom they must account for their words—

like politicians, bankers, older brothers,
theologians, poets, headmasters—

they are wrong. Every knee will bow, every
tongue confess. So I do not use words

like “shit” or “Sovereign Lord” unaware.
Berryman, after Hopkins, wrote truly:

that line about Christ being the only
just critic. I write because it takes little

to spark my rage, and Saint Paul said we must
toil with our hands for the end of anger

is murder, and if any would be saved,
they must, with fear and trembling, work it out.


This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: second post, third post, fourth post.

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

Scott Cairns

Scott Cairns is the author of six poetry collections — the most recent being his new and selected poems, Compass of Affection (Paraclete Press). His poems have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Image and Poetry. He has taught at several universities, and is currently Director of Creative Writing at University of Missouri.

Cairns has long believed that poetry should be more than merely a record of something that has previously happened, but that it needs to be something of significance in itself. In discussing positive changes that have occurred within the art of poetry, Scott Cairns said in Image just over a decade ago, “The new poetry, a poetry which employs language as agency and power rather than merely as name for another and prior thing, demands that it be read and re-read, and poked, and puzzled over as an event of its own. The poem is not about a thing; it is a thing.”

The following poem is from his 1998 collection, Recovered Body.

The More Earnest Prayer of Christ

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly…
----------------------------------— Luke 22:44

His last prayer in the garden began, as most
of his prayers began–in earnest, certainly,
but not without distraction, an habitual…what?

Distance? Well, yes, a sort of distance, or a mute
remove from the genuine distress he witnessed
in the endlessly grasping hands of multitudes

and, often enough, in his own embarrassing
circle of intimates. Even now, he could see
these where they slept, sprawled upon their robes or wrapped

among the arching olive trees. Still, something new,
unlikely, uncanny was commencing as he spoke.
As the divine in him contracted to an ache,

a throbbing in the throat, his vision blurred, his voice
grew thick and unfamiliar; his prayer–just before
it fell to silence–became uniquely earnest.

And in that moment–perhaps because it was so
new–he saw something, had his first taste of what
he would become, first pure taste of the body, and the blood.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Scott Cairns: second post, third post, fourth post.

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