Leslie Leyland Fields

Leslie Leyland Fields is an Alaskan writer who has published twelve books, including Your Story Matters (2020, NavPress), Crossing the Waters (2016), and the poetry collection The Water Under Fish (1994). She has taught at the University of Alaska, and is a founding faculty member of Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program. She also founded the Harvester Island Wilderness Workshop, an annual writing retreat on her family’s wilderness island in Alaska.

She and the poet Paul J. Willis have just had a new collection of Advent readings published by IVP: A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season. It consists of 42 readings from the first Sunday of Advent through to Epiphany written by members of the Chrysostrom Society. Some of these readings are poems, while others are stories and essays, and they come from such highly regarded writers as Luci Shaw, Robert Siegel, Diane Glancy, Eugene Peterson, and Madeleine L’Engle ― all of whom are (or were) members of the Chrysostrom Society.

The following poem is from Leslie Leyland Fields, and appears in A Radiant Birth.

Let the Stable Still Astonish

Let the stable still astonish:
Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: "Yes,
Let the God of all the heavens and earth
be born here, in this place?”
Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
Of our hearts and says, "Yes,
Let the God
of Heaven and Earth
be born here―
In this place."

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.

Walter Wangerin Jr.*

Walter Wangerin Jr. (1944―2021) is the author of more than 40 books, and served as a Lutheran pastor, and as a professor at Evansville University and later at Valparaiso University ― both in Indiana. His novel Book of the Dun Cow (1978) rocketed him into the spotlight, enabling him to write a wide variety of books across his career.

He has participated as a member of the Chrysostom Society, which includes (or included at various points) such fine writers as Madeleine L’Engle, Luci Shaw, Robert Siegel, John Leax, Doris Betts, Paul Willis, Jeanne Murray Walker, Eugene Peterson and Philip Yancey.

Yancey said in an August 9th memorial piece for Christianity Today, “As both a sermonizer and an artist, with graduate degrees in theology and English, Walt lived with the constant tension of how best to express themes of grace and the Cross. As a pastor, he found that story conveys truth most effectively and profoundly.”

Walter Wangerin Jr. lived with cancer for more than fifteen years, before dying on August 5th 2021. The following poem is from his collection On an Age-Old Anvil (Cascade Books, 2018).

Sacred

The wild geese lace the sky
flying north,
flying to the arctic
to lay and brood
the egg of creation.

The ancient Irishman
laying windrows with his scythe
looks up with a blue, rheumy eye.
He drops the cutting blade
and raises reverential hands.

Once it was a Dove,
the Holy Ghost descending.
Now it is the wild goose
flying.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Walter Wangerin Jr.: 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 Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson is a professor emeritus of English at Oregon State University. His 14 books include three poetry collections; the newest is You Never Know (2018, Stephen F. Austin University Press). He describes himself as “a believer and a walker in the woods”. He is also an ordained Catholic deacon.

In his book Light When It Comes: Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything (Eerdmans, 2016) he writes, “We all have moments…that move us somehow, that seem to mean something we can’t quite put into words, but we are embarrassed by them or we doubt them or in the rush of things that happen to us each day we forget about them.” His book’s purpose, as the subtitle expresses, is to encourage us to trust such moments because they can lead us to God.

Paul Willis has described “a shimmering strangeness that marks the presence of the holy” in Anderson’s poetry. His website is: www.deaconchrisanderson.com

With an Intimate Friend

With an intimate friend
you don’t always have to be intimate.
Especially in the morning.
You can just sit together
drinking coffee. Reading the paper.
So it is with prayer.
He the front page, you the sports.

Posted with permission of the poet. This post was suggested by Charles Wood.

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.

Paul Willis*

Paul J. Willis has been a professor at Westmount College for thirty years, and is the former Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, California. He has had two recent experiences as an Artist-in-Residence in the North Cascade Mountains; these have been a significant influence on his two most-recent poetry collections — Deer at Twilight (2018, Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and Little Rhymes For Lowly Plants (2019, Kelsay Books).

As the title of his new book indicates, he has been recently drawn into formally-structured poetry, and has unpretentiously chosen to focus on what he’s found around his feet. There is also a section in this book about matters of faith — including five poems that previously appeared in my anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

He has now published six collections of poetry, including Say This Prayer Into The Past (2013, Poiema Poetry Series). The following poem is from Little Rhymes For Lowly Plants.

Here and There

-----(Platanus racemose)

The ivory of sycamore
in the winter morning sun
for just an hour. But what a shine.

We too stand up illuminated,
in the valley of the shadow,
losing leaves, and that’s a sign

our roots are meant for higher ground;
though we may grow as splendid oak,
bay, sycamore, we sigh and pine.

—Los Padres National Forest

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Paul Willis: first post second post, third post.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Paul Willis*

Paul Willis has just had his fourth poetry collection — Getting To Gardisky Lake — published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. He is a professor of English at Westmount College, where he has taught for 25 years, and is the former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. His previous collection — Say This Prayer Into The Past — is part of the Poiema Poetry Series.

One of the poems in his new book first appeared on my blog The 55 Project. He is also one of the poets featured in my new anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry, which came out in November — (available here) and through Amazon. He also has poetry forthcoming in my anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

In his recent interview in the Santa Barbara Independent, Willis responded to the question of where poetry and faith meet for him by saying, "I don’t know that I ever set out to write nature poetry...[or] spiritual poetry, either...But you are right; I’m not much of a proselytizer. Evangelicals like to talk about having Jesus in their hearts. If Jesus really is in my heart, he might peek out in some poems, but I don’t feel the need to preach."

The following poem is from Getting To Gardisky Lake and demonstrates the poet's ecological concerns.

Q & A

"Look there," he said, and pointed
out the window of the climbing plane.

"More swimming pools in Johannesburg
than you have got in Los Angeles."

And there were many. Little strings of aqua
jewels that necklaced every neighborhood.

The man was on his way to finance
gold mines on the shores of Lake Victoria.

They would leach the gold from piles
of ore with cyanide, a cunning way.

"Do you worry about the water?"
I asked. "The groundwater?"

He closed his eyes. "Just look," he said.
"Look at all the swimming pools."

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Paul Willis: first post, second post, fourth post.

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.

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

Paul Willis

Paul Willis is an English professor at Westmount College in Santa Barbara, California. Besides writing poetry, he has published essays such as those in his book Bright Shoots of Everlastingness (WordFarm); he also has a novel forthcoming.

A dominant influence on his life and writing has been being a mountaineer. He grew up in Oregon, close to the Cascade Mountains, where he was wholly “summit bound”. He and his brother recklessly sought to climb every peek in their state, and were “very nearly obliterated” doing it. In one attempt to climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley, Paul’s brother lost his hands and feet to frostbite, while Paul was hallucinating — still 800 feet from the top.

Mountaineering has also drawn him towards the work of pioneer naturalist John Muir, and inspired him to pursue ecological issues. The following is the title poem from his most-recent poetry collection.

Rosing from the Dead

We are on our way home
from Good Friday service.
It is dark. It is silent.
“Sunday,” says Hanna,
“Jesus will be rosing
from the dead.”

It must have been like that.
A white blossom, or maybe
a red one, pulsing
from the floor of the tomb, reaching
round the Easter stone
and levering it aside
with pliant thorns.

The soldiers overcome
with the fragrance,
and Mary at sunrise
mistaking the dawn-dewed
Rose of Sharon
for the untameable Gardener.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

This is the first of three Kingdom Poets posts about Paul Willis: 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