Ruth Pitter

Ruth Pitter (1897—1992) is a British poet, who published a total of eighteen poetry collections. For her book, First Poems (1920), she received help and encouragement from Hilaire Belloc. A Trophy of Arms earned her the 1937 Hawthornden Prize, and in 1955 she received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. After WWII she was a frequent guest on BBC Radio, and in the late fifties was a regular on the early television talk show The Brains Trust.

In a letter, she once wrote:
------"As to my faith, I owe it to C. S. Lewis. For much of my
------life I lived more or less as a Bohemian, but when the
------second war broke out, Lewis broadcast several times,
------and also published some little books (notably The
------Screwtape Letters), and I was fairly hooked. I came to
------know him personally, and he came here several times.
------Lewis's stories, so very entertaining but always about
------the war between good and evil, became a permanent part
------of my mental and spiritual equipment."
She and C.S. Lewis became close friends, and he became a great admirer of her poetry.

O Come Out of the Lily

O come out of the lily to me,
Come out of the morning-glory's bell,
Out of the rose and the peony,
You that made them, made so well
Leaf and flower and the spiral shell,
And the weed that waves in coves of the sea.

O look out of the ermine's eye,
And look down with the eye of the bird,
And ride the air with the butterfly
Whose wings are written with many a word,
Read and beloved but never heard,
The secret message, the silent cry.

O leap out of another's mind,
Come from the toils of the terrible brain:
Sleep no longer, nor lurk behind
Hate and anger and woeful pain:
As once in the garden, walk again,
Centre and spirit of human kind.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Ruth Pitter: 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.

C.S. Lewis*

C.S. Lewis (1898—1963) is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Because of the way his mind worked, forming analogies to explain the complex ideas he was presenting, his fiction often had much more going on than what was merely on the surface. He is well-known for such creations as The Screwtape Letters (1942) written from the point-of-view of a senior demon dispensing advice to an underling on how to undermine the spiritual progress of a human subject — or The Great Divorce (1946) which tells of an imagined bus tour of heaven for those who dwell in hell.

I have chosen to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death by releasing my poetry collection Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis (Cascade Books), which further interacts with Lewis's fascinating way of looking at things.

He will also be honoured at Westminster Abbey on November 22nd — the anniversary of his death — when a memorial stone will be ceremoniously unveiled in Poets' Corner. Other poets honoured in the South Transept include Geoffrey Chaucer, William Blake, W.H. Auden, and former Lewis student John Betjeman.

Prayer

Master they say that when I seem
To be in speech with you,
Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream
— One talker aping two.

They are half right, but not as they
Imagine; rather, I
Seek in myself the things I meant to say,
And lo! The well’s are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The Listener’s role, and through
My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew.

And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus while we seem
Two talking, thou art One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream.

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

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke is a contemporary British poet whose words "and I am here in a place beyond desire or fear", from the poem "Praise", can be read just outside the entrance to St. Pancras Old Church, carved in stone by the sculptor Emily Young; many of his poems can also be found framed inside. He was described by the Daily Telegraph as "the pious poet of St Pancras". He told the Church Times, however, "I have a rather simplistic way of walking through the world as a Christian. I rarely attend formal church services. I will go into a church when it is empty..."

His poems often seek to capture a place and the people in it, rather than reflect upon spiritual practice, even though the titles of some of his work — such as the pamphlet Common Prayer — would seem to suggest otherwise. He lives in London and usually writes of urban scenes, however his poetry collection, Devon Hymns (2010), was inspired by a sojourn in farm country.

In the aforementioned interview he said, "If we walked through the world...paying...close attention, it would change everything, make us more worshipful, appreciative, more acknowledging of each other, and of God."

He is now Poet in Residence at Eton College. The following poem is from Devon Hymns.

Evening

The sun rides the downhill sky
and the day's routines rewind.
Cows return to fields from milking
and machine noise begins to die.

The day working its way back
to a half-light and a birdsong chorus—
the prologue and epilogue to every day.

The songburst will thin out
back to a single voice,
then all will be quiet and still
except the non-stop stream,
a pilot light of sound.

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918—2008) is a Russian writer, most famous for such novels as Cancer Ward (1968) and August 1914 (1971). He is also a poet and an historian. He spoke out boldly against the USSR's totalitarian government. In 1945 he was arrested and given an eight-year sentence in a detention camp for writing "anti-Soviet propaganda". During his imprisonment he abandoned belief in Marxism, and began gradually turning towards Christian faith.

In 1970 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, and deprived of his citizenship. In 1975 he and his family moved to Vermont, where he spoke more boldly about the importance of Christianity in his world view. He was able to return to Russia in 1992, after the Soviet Union dissolved.

The following poem was written in 1972, which was about the time he began to be very serious about faith in Christ.

How easy it is to live with You, O Lord.

How easy it is to live with You, O Lord.
How easy to believe in You.
When my spirit is overwhelmed within me,
When even the keenest see no further than the night,
And know not what to do tomorrow,
You bestow on me the certitude
That You exist and are mindful of me,
That all the paths of righteousness are not barred.
As I ascend in to the hill of earthly glory,
I turn back and gaze, astonished, on the road
That led me here beyond despair,
Where I too may reflect Your radiance upon mankind.
All that I may reflect, You shall accord me,
And appoint others where I shall fail.

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.

Luci Shaw*

Luci Shaw is the author of ten previous books of poetry. She was selected to be the 2013 recipient of the Denise Levertov Award; the award is given annually "to an artist or creative writer whose work exemplifies a serious and sustained engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition." Luci Shaw's poetry so obviously does this. Since 1988 she has been the Writer in Residence at Regent College in Vancouver. She has also been poetry editor for both Crux (a Regent journal) and Radix (of Berkeley, California) for many years.

Robert Cording has said in praise of her new collection, Scape: "As Luci Shaw knows, in the 'many dimensions' of the world we move through, the radiance we receive as a gift is balanced against the cost of mortality and loss. Her poems have a Buddhist acceptance of the conditions of life and a Christian faith in the 'dislodgings,' 'realignments' and 'reintegrations' that are part of the self’s being made perpetually new, even as we age..."

This post is to celebrate the publication of her newest volume of poetry, Scape. I am pleased to say that it is one of the latest books in the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books, of which I am the editor. It was a pleasure to work with Luci on this collection. The following poem is from Scape.

Sparrow

This undistinguished, indistinguishable bird--
this prototype of insignificance—
this very moment’s sparrow at
our porch feeder—makes of her compactness
a virtue. From between the wires
she pecks the black sunflower seeds, neat head bobbing,
purposeful, economical, precise.
Watchful—peck and peek, peck and check.

I have seen scarlet tanagers, purple finches,
grosbeaks, red-footed gulls, even the arrogant
displays of peacocks. In her anonymity,
this diminutive bird is who she is, her suit
brown-grey as damp dust, eyes bright as beads.
This simple-ness, this pure unselfconsciousness,
this understated…this….Oh, the adjectives multiply,
but they are too large for this small one,
who humbles my own mud-brown heart.

She poises her nimble self to flick away, quick
as scissors—at a cat, a squirrel,
my movement at the glass door.

I tilt my head for a better angle, and she’s gone,
to the safety of the cedars.

Sometimes in my timidity I overcompensate
and try to sound large until I know
such falsehood betrays him who humbled himself,
who values a sparrow.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Luci Shaw: first post; second post; fourth post, fifth 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.

A.J.M. Smith

A.J.M. Smith (1902—1980) is a Canadian poet whose first collection News of the Phoenix (1943) won the Governor General's Award for poetry. For more than 35 years he taught at what is now Michigan State University, and spent his summers in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

When he was still a grad student, in Montreal in 1925, together with F.R. Scott he founded and edited the McGill Fortnightly Review — the first Canadian periodical to publish modernist poetry. His PhD thesis was on "the Metaphysical Poets of the Anglican Church in the 17th Century". In 1936, along with Scott, and Leo Kennedy, he edited the anthology New Provinces — which was also significant in the promotion of modernist poetry in Canada.

Beside One Dead

This is the sheath,
---the sword drawn,
These are the lips,
---the word spoken.
This is Calvary
---toward dawn;
And this is the
---third-day token —
The opened tomb
---and the Lord gone:
Something whole
---that was broken.

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

Paul Willis*

Paul Willis is a writer of fiction, essays and poetry, who has just had his third poetry collection, Say This Prayer Into The Past (Cascade Books), appear. He has taught as a professor of English at Westmount College, in Santa Barbara, California since 1988. He has also recently completed his two-year term as Santa Barbara's Poet Laureate.

His poems and essays have been selected for such influential anthologies as: The Best American Poetry 1996 (Scribner's), The Best Spiritual Writing 1999 (Harper, San Francisco), The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004 (Houghton Mifflin), and The Best Christian Writing 2006 (Jossey Bass). It is my pleasure to have worked with Paul as the editor for his new collection, Say This Prayer Into The Past, which is part of the Poiema Poetry Series.

He and his family lost their home, including his library, in November 2008 to the Montecito Tea Fire that swept through Montecito and Santa Barbara — destroying 210 homes. I suspect the following poem, which appears in his new book, was written with that experience in mind.

Burn Victims

The oak trees by the creek are sweating blood.
There where the fire passed through, pressed by the wind,
their barks are blackened, and oozing through the singe,
red beads of sap drip sorrowingly down
to ashes. If we knew Gethsemane
were not a garden anymore and wept
itself, the knotty foreheads of each burl
contracted in one brow of woe, our prayer
would not be for life’s cup but merely that
our hearts might burn within us. Seared and scarred,
we’d bleed in hope of olives buried deep
among the roots, where what remains may rise.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Paul Willis: first 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