José Tolentino Mendonça

José Tolentino Mendonça is a Portuguese poet who was born on the Atlantic island of Madeira. He spent his childhood in Angola — a Portuguese colony up until he was nine (1975), when his family returned to Madeira. He has served as a priest, teacher, and chaplain at the Catholic University in Lisbon, has held multiple visiting professorships at two Jesuit-led schools in Brazil, and is now a Cardinal at the Vatican.

Mendonça is the author of at least thirteen poetry collections in Portuguese, his first published in 1990. He was a Straus Fellow at New York University during the academic year 2011-2012. His poetic subject-matter is more often secular than religious, and yet images of faith creep in, such as in the poem “The Childhood Of Herberto Helder” where he begins,
--------“In the beginning was the island
--------although it's said
--------that the Spirit of God
--------hugged the waters”

In 2025, Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça won the Eduardo Lourenço Prize for his contribution to contemporary Portuguese culture and his role as an intellectual, humanist and poet.

The following poem was translated by Ana Hudson.

Eschatology

And, at last, God returns
full of intimacy and unexpectedness
contemplated already from centuries above
humble measure of a verbal silence
we thought destined to be lost
See God climbing the steep path
that we have paced a thousand times
and stop to wait without impatience
meek as a sick lamb
Which one of us is the other’s shadow?
Even if no pity preserves the maps
we’ll come down close behind
rampant and empty
like a tree trunk

This post was suggested by Irish poet Gerard Smyth.

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

N.F.S. Grundtvig

N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783—1872) is a Danish poet, pastor, educator, hymnwriter, philosopher, politician (serving as a member of the Danish Constituent Assembly), and historian. He is extremely important in Denmark as a nationalist, social reformer, Lutheran theologian, and for his establishing of folk high schools. His style of writing, and his limiting references, made him unlikely to draw much attention from an international audience, and yet he is consider one of the most influential people in Danish history.

Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (pronounced Groont-vi) was active in what is considered Denmark’s Golden Age — the first half of the 19th century. His output was impressive, writing in a wide range of fields, such as with his The First World Chronicle (1812) an outline of the history of belief in God, including his criticisms of many prominent Danes. His book-length historical poem Rhyme of Roskilde appeared in 1813. He published many theological works, regularly preached sermons, published a collection of sacred poetry (Song Work for the Danish Church), edited and translated the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Phoenix", and translated Beowulf into Danish (1820).

As a tribute to him, the Neo-Gothic expressionist Grundtvig's Church in Copenhagen was designed by Danish architect Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint, and was completed in 1940.

A Simple, Cheerful Active Life On Earth

A simple, cheerful, active life on earth,
A cup I’d not exchange for monarch’s chalice,
In noble forebears’ tracks a path since birth,
With equal dignity in hut and palace,
With eye as when created heav’nward turned,
All beauty here and grandness keenly knowing,
Familiar though with those things deeply yearned,
Stilled only by eternity’s bright glowing.

I wished for all my line just such a life,
And zealously I planned for its fruition,
And when my soul grew tired from toil and strife,
The ‘Lord’s Prayer’ was its rest and its nutrition.
Then from truth’s spirit I great comfort gained,
And felt joy hover o’er each garden border,
When dust is placed in its creator’s hand
And all is waited for in nature’s order:

Just fresh, green buds that sprout in early spring,
And in the summer heat the flowers’ profusion;
And when the plants mature and long to bring
Their harvest fruit to autumn’s full conclusion!
The human span assigned is short or long,
It is for common weal, its yield is growing;
The day that started well will end as strong,
And just as sweet will be its afterglowing.

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

Claudia Lee Hae-in

Claudia Lee Hae-in is a South Korean Catholic Nun who’s published eighteen poetry collections, beginning with The Land of Dandelions (1976). She’s sold almost two million copies of her poetry books, and her name has been raised during considerations for the Nobel Prize.

In 2008, she had a serious bout with rectal cancer — and in 2015, a news report circulated that she had died, and her “last poem” was widely shared. Reports of her death, as Mark Twain once quipped, were greatly exaggerated. Lee said, “I could forgive the fake news, but I can’t go easy on the fake poem.”

According to The Korea Times, “She affirms that her literary insights have been transformed through praying to Jesus.”

Balloon Flower

How thin and beautiful is the summer dress you wear,
delighting me with your violet fragrance!
Soaked in cold dewdrops, you whisper so shyly.
As you gather innocent glances of love in your heart,
a round smile blooms on your silent lips.
Even if passing time leaves nothing
But tears to daunt my mind,
I wish to spend my whole life in prayer
as mild as your humble smiles.
How could you come so unexpectedly
from an unknown country so far away?
Some other day, will you bloom on my tomb
to recite a prayer or two for my wandering soul?

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

Alcuin

Alcuin (c. 735–804) is a scholar, clergyman, poet, teacher, and a significant figure in the court of Charlemagne. He was born in Northumbria, and educated at the York cathedral school from a young age. He frequently travelled to the continent — at first to acquire books and artworks for the expanding library at York, which became quite well known until it unfortunately was destroyed in 866 during a raid by marauding Vikings.

On his return from a journey to Rome, he was invited to join a scholastic union of intellectuals, selected by Charlemagne, from across Europe, formed at his court at Aachen. Alcuin wrote poetry, letters and grammatical instructions as well as theological treatises. His surviving writings, are an important source for scholars concerning this time period. One of his greatest contributions was the Golden Gospels, an illuminated manuscript written in gold on purple vellum. He died at Marmoutier Abbey in Tours.

The following poem was translated from the Latin by Maryann Corbett. It first appeared in Cerise Press, is from her poetry collection Mid Evil (Evansville, 2015), and appears in To Heaven's Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Poetry edited by Burl Horniachek.

Concerning A Nightingale

Jealousy, that’s what it was. It was thin-fingered envy that nabbed you,
----stealing away my delight, Nightingale, out of the broom!
Sour as my soul had become, you could fill it with honeying sweetness,
----lilting it into my ears, lifting it into my heart.
Come, all you creatures with wings! Let them come from the corners of
--heaven
----adding their grief to my own, singing the song of the muse.
Not much to look at for color, but sound that could carry my heart off:
----sound with the breadth of the air poured from your throat’s little strait,
sweetness in dollops and pours and melismas, repeating, renewing,
----always a song in your mouth to him who is maker of all.
Everywhere night and its terrible blackness, yet still you were singing,
----voice that should still us to prayer, ornament hung on the dark.
Why should we wonder at all at the angels eternally chanting
----praise to the Lord of the storm? You could sing endlessly too.

Posted with permission of the translator

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

Brian Volck*

Brian Volck is both a pediatrician and a poet who has recently relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He still teaches, however, at the Ecumenical Institute at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland. His first poetry collection Flesh Becomes Word was published in 2013 (Dos Madras Press).

His new book, Chora has just appeared as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. I am pleased to say I worked with Brian to ready this book for publication. Paul Mariani has said about this new book:
----"Brian Volck's Chora is a brilliant collection of poems, covering all
----seasons, often month by month, and so many splendid locations,
----from Baltimore and Cincinnati to the American West — especially
----among the Navajo nation — to Europe and Greece. He's a deeply
----philosophical thinker, versed in the Hebrew scriptures and
----especially in the Gospels, offering one new insight after another.
----Then too there is the way he keeps returning, with the help of his
----wife and muse, to the beauty right there before him, as women so
----often see it first. Yes, and there is of course, being the physician,
----pediatrician, and teacher that he is, the reality of human suffering
----and the deep loss of our loved ones. Page after page offers us
----another insight, a new sense of reality that only the poem can
----offer: the elegiac, yes, but then too the bounty of blessings we
----have been given."

The following poem is from Chora (Poiema/Cascade, 2026)

Treasures of TANAKH Hebrew: Hineni

I am not ready, my mind a beehive
of regret for blunders past redemption
and fear for my—and my children’s—future.

I am not ready, my heart beleaguered
by contrary loves, frayed fidelities,
what is dearest to me most neglected.

I am not ready, my body weary,
muscles slackened from wonted indolence,
flesh scarred by the cudgels of compulsion.

Do not compel me yet to the mountain
of trial nor demand more sacrifice
from the plundered household of my hope.

Late have I turned, invoking your name,
trusting you to shepherd my wayward mind
and drive the darkening clouds from my heart.

Open, then, my mouth that I might utter
in your presence the words I long to say:
Here I am, Adonai. I am ready.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge*

Samuel Tayler Coleridge (1772—1834) is describe by the Poetry Foundation as “the premier poet-critic of modern English tradition, distinguished for the scope and influence of his thinking about literature as much as for his innovative verse.” As a religious thinker his writings influenced philosophical views in the areas of aesthetics, theology, and the philosophy of the mind. His focus on the imagination, and the importance of well-chosen metaphors for influencing the way we view ourselves impacted English intellectual life.

His first collection, Poems on Various Subjects, appeared in 1796. During the preceding year he met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. In 1797 and 1798, Coleridge lived in Nether Stowey, Somerset, just three miles from Wordsworth. This was the most productive poetic period of his life, in which Coleridge wrote such poems as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”, “Frost at Midnight”, and “The Nightingale”.

Coleridge’s great work of literary criticism Biographia Literaria appeared in 1817.

from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemèd there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!—

To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends
And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Samuel Taylor Coleridge: first post, second post, third post.

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

Gerard Smyth*

Gerard Smyth is above all else, a Dublin poet. He was born in Dublin in 1951, and lives there still. He is the author of eleven books of poetry. In his most-recent collection The Turn for Ithaca (Dedalus Press, 2026), he has several poems about his city featuring various Dublin poets and artists, including Thomas Kinsella, Eavan Boland, Brendan Kennelly, and Luke Kelly (founding member of the folk group The Dubliners).

Smyth’s enriching nostalgia also reflects on musical greats from his youth, tributes to the beat poets, and acknowledgements of foreign-language poets he admires, such as Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, and Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva.

This May, my wife and I had the privilege of having lunch with Gerard Smyth, and John F. Deane, at a Dublin pub called “The Downing Well”. There we exchanged our latest poetry collections and talked of poetry — both in Ireland and Canada.

The following poem is from The Turn for Ithaca (Dedalus Press, 2026).

What the Young Saint Said

for John F Deane

Let God be God, the young saint said,
not Roman, not Greek,
or belonging only to pilgrim and conqueror
but the God of all things: the Judas Tree
and hornet’s nest, songthrush and garden slug.

Let God be God, not the bearer of so many names
or the judge who sits in the court of angels.
Let him not be the gatekeeper at the Gates of Wrath,
the tormenter of an innocent conscience.

Let God be God, the young saint said,
not the cause of holy wars
or one who sends his proxies to rob our mirth
but a God unbothered by heresies of dogma,
His presence heard in the singer’s voice,
sound of the orchestra, the iron gate
when it creaks, the bells on Paternoster Street.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Gerard Smyth: first post.

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