Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is the current Poet Laureate of Arkansas. Some of her recent poetry collections include, The Perfume of Pain (Kelsay Books, 2024), and Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems (Paraclete Press, 2021).

She has taught creative writing at King University in Bristol, Tennessee, and at St. Leo University in St. Leo, Florida; she is also a former artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where — in a residential program for formerly incarcerated women — she led poetry workshops, resulting in a book of their creative writing: Today There Have Been Lovely Things. She and other poets also share poetry with Alzheimer’s residents in a Fayetteville memory care center.

The following poem first appeared in The Christian Century. (The Swahili words Kibanda matope mean mud hut.)

Traveling light

I caught the gleam of her silver bracelet
as she stroked her son’s back in church
that Sunday the missionary came.
The gesture invited a burst of sunlight
that poured through the stained glass
and over our shoulders, down the aisles,
swam through our ribs to reach the world’s night side.
Imagine the miracle. Loving her son that instant
changes the plight of the ninth child
in the kibanda matope, the one the missionary
said was born blind and given the most meager
share of meal in preference to others
who needed more to live, but he comes to see
after all because someone was sent,
and the light is always looking.

This post was suggested by the poet James Owens.

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.

Walter Chalmers Smith

Walter Chalmers Smith (1824—1908) is a Scottish poet, hymnist, and novelist who served as a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, pastoring congregations in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Like George MacDonald (who was five days younger) he was born in Aberdeen; both men became ministers and authors, and both were hesitance to accept unquestioningly the status quo.

He was an evangelical who in 1866 published Discourses promoting less stringent Sunday observances than were common in Scotland. This led to him being "affectionately admonished" by the General Assembly of his Presbytery. Despite this, by 1893, he was chosen their new moderator.

The first of his many poetry collections The Bishop’s Walk (Macmillan) was published in 1861 under the pseudonym Orwell Smith — (Orwell being the name of the parish he served in from 1853 to1857). His gothic novel Olrig Grange appeared under the name Hermann Knott in 1872 — with a fourth edition published in 1888. His Poetical Works (Dent) appeared in 1902. However, he is best remembered today as the author of the following hymn.

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life thou givest — to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but nought changeth thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render: O help us to see
’Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.

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.

John Milton*

John Milton (1608—1674) is one of England’s greatest writers, and one who wrote during very tempestuous times. He was outspoken on political and ecclesiastical matters, when it was safer to keep such views to himself. His Areopagitica (1644) gained wide attention for his condemnation of censorship, and allied him publicly with the parliamentary cause.

As a Puritan he wrote tracts criticizing the High-church party within the Anglican establishment, while politically he criticized the government of Charles I. In 1649, after the parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State. His role was to write in support of Cromwell’s government.

In 1660, at the Restoration of the monarchy, a warrant was issued for Milton’s arrest, his writings were burnt, and he went into hiding. He was briefly imprisoned, until influential friends, including Andrew Marvell, were able to have him released.

John Milton is revered as the author of Paradise Lost (1667) — his great epic about the Fall of mankind, and the hope of salvation through Christ. It became one of the most widely read works of English literature well into the Romantic period, influencing such poets as Blake, Shelley and Keats.

The Lord Will Come and Not be Slow

The Lord will come and not be slow,
his footsteps cannot err;
before him righteousness shall go,
his royal harbinger.
Truth from the earth, like to a flower,
shall bud and blossom then;
and justice, from her heavenly bower,
look down on mortal men.

Surely to such as do him fear
salvation is at hand!
And glory shall ere long appear
to dwell within our land.
Rise, God, judge thou the earth in might,
this wicked earth redress;
for thou art he who shalt by right
the nations all possess.

The nations all whom thou hast made
shall come, and all shall frame
to bow them low before thee, Lord,
and glorify thy Name.
For great thou art, and wonders great
by thy strong hand are done:
thou in thy everlasting seat
remainest God alone.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about John Milton: 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.

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.

Gilbert Luis R. Centina III

Gilbert Luis R. Centina III (1947—2020) is a Filipino writer and Augustinian friar whose output includes nine poetry collections. He was an international, multilingual writer who lived in the Philippines, Peru, the United States, and Spain — and who wrote in English, Spanish, and two Philippine languages: Hiligaynon and Tagalog.

His two novels are Wages of Sin, which was published in Honolulu in 1988, and Rubrics and Runes (2013) which addresses various scandals by priests within the Catholic church.

He died due to complication of the coronavirus in Spain. For his body of poetic work in Spanish, he was posthumously awarded the Premio José Rizal de las Letras Filipinas.

The following poem is from Centina’s 1974 collection Glass of Liquid Truths.

Genuflection

I hear the choir-conversion
Wake senses through my ears,
I see heavenly vision
In the vista of a hymn.
I watch the gleaming chandeliers
Exude their hidden grace
Above the vigil candles
Incensed with fragrant flames.

This is the Cathedral of Silence
Where he has led me in,
How strong his Passion echoes
Inside these cloistered walls.
All things here trodden by the calm
Of yet unfathomed peace,
The sight is awed to stillness,
The soul to holier aims.

O choir-conversion that I hear
I breathe the wisdom of your tale!

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.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825―1911) is a poet, journalist, public speaker, and story writer. She was born in Baltimore to free Black parents. She became involved in the abolitionist cause, assisting slaves in their journeys on the Underground Railroad. She was also an activist in the women’s suffrage and temperance movements.

She is the author of many poetry collections, including Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), and The Sparrow’s Fall and Other Poems (1894). Her story “The Two Offers” was the first short story published by an African American. She also published several novels and essay collections.

The motivation for her activism was her faith in Christ. She took on the powerful, white status quo that justified slavery through the twisting of scripture. While speaking at rallies, her language was heavily flavoured by references to the Bible, particularly to the direct teaching and actions of Jesus.

The following poem is from her 1846 book Forest Leaves (also known as Autumn Leaves).

That Blessed Hope

Oh touch it not that hope so blest
------Which cheers the fainting heart,
------And points it to the coming rest
------Where sorrow has no part.

Tear from heart each worldly prop,
------Unbind each earthly string;
------But to this blest and glorious hope,
------Oh let my spirit cling.

It cheer’d amid the days of old
------Each holy patriarch’s breast,
------It was an anchor to their souls,
------Upon it let me rest.

When wand’ring in the dens and caves,
------In goat and sheep skins drest,
------Apeel’d and scatter’d people learn’d
------To know this hope was blest.

Help me to love this blessed hope;
------My heart’s a fragile thing;
------Will you not nerve and bear it up
------Around this hope to cling.

Help amid this world of strife
------To long for Christ to reign,
------That when he brings the crown of life
------I may that crown obtain.

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.