Kevin Hart*

Kevin Hart is an Australian theologian, philosopher, and poet. He has taught at numerous schools, including Notre Dame University, University of Virginia, and is currently the Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of numerous scholarly books, including Poetry and Revelation: For a Phenomenology of Religious Poetry (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), as well as many poetry collections.

His new book, Carnets (Poiema/Cascade, 2025), is quite different than his other poetry books — probably quite different than any poetry book you’ve ever encountered. It consists of 500 single-line poems, or aphorisms. Here are a few of those which recently appeared in Ekstasis:

------If the words rise up to meet you, it’s poetry.

------Everything good was created by God; the rest, by committee.

------The truth is whole but mostly found in scraps.

------When you contemplate, time flows around you not through you.

I am honoured to have worked with Kevin Hart as editor for Carnets.

The following poem first appeared in the Tasmanian journal Forty South. The first half of the title is taken from some very old Chinese poems, and yet reminds me of similar epigraphs leading into several of the Psalms. Lake St. Clair, here, has nothing to do with the Ontario/Michigan border, but to the mountain lake in Tasmania.

To the Tune of “Early in the Morning”

Dissolving hills
Cradling Lake St. Clair:

The milky light of winter
In the early hours,

A forest old as rain
And a cold sky running south

As far as mind can see
With glaciers calving there.

God made the world
With just a breath:

Three days now
Of hiking through it.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Kevin Hart: 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.

Kevin Hart

Kevin Hart is an Australian poet, philosopher and theologian. He has published thirteen books of poetry, beginning with The Departure (1978). His poetry has received numerous awards such as the NSW Premier's Award, and the Greybeal-Gowen Prize. His most-recent collection is Morning Knowledge (2011). His earliest poetry influence was Percy Bysshe Shelley—particularly the poem "Ozymandius".

Hart is the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia.

The Room

It is my house, and yet one room is locked.
The dark has taken root on all four walls.
It is a room where knots stare out from wood,
A room that turns its back on the whole house.

At night I hear the crickets list their griefs
And let an ancient peace come into me.
Sleep intercepts my prayer, and in the dark
The house turns slowly round its one closed room.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Kevin Hart: 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.