Five Female Poets of Faith

One thing the world needs is for more people to read poetry. Especially from female writers of a certain age who identify as people of faith. I hope you enjoy this small round up and hope you’ll take the time to read more of their work via the links provided. You will be richer for it.

–Abigail Carroll

That I Might Dwell

That I might dwell in warbler
song, in fields of sorrel, fields
of stars, that dwelling in your
house I’d know, I’d rest, I’d play
at wonder. Oh that I might dwell

in pine-branched shade, among
the sway, among the praise of oak-fern,                                                                                        granite, jay nest, spruce—
among the shadow-dance of leaves,
the breeze unpinning doubt, all

apathy, all hollow hours, all fears.
Oh may I dwell in reverence here,
and dwelling in your house, I’ll
wait, I’ll pray, I’ll lay this body
down on what you’ve dreamed,

on what you’ve sung, spliced, spun,
twined, embroidered, breathed.
And dwelling in your house I’ll
know the peace of moss, the moth-                                                                                                  winged hush of unhinged awe,

musk of sage, gaze of deer. Oh let
me lose myself in rooms of fox-                                                                                                      glove, cowslip, wild plum, wren—
that I might taste the sleep of loam,
that I might tenant beauty here.

from Habitation of Wonder (Wipf & Stock 2018)

Abigail Carroll is a poet and author whose most recent book, Habitation of Wonder (Wipf & Stock, 2018), is an offering of poems that travels the intersection of the natural landscape and the landscape of spirit. A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim (Eerdmans, 2017), has been called “sparked with joy and stitched with whimsy” by the Chicago Tribune, and Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal (Basic Books, 2013), was a finalist for the Zocalo Public Square Book Prize. Click here for Abigail’s website. Continue reading “Five Female Poets of Faith”

Female Faith Poet-Barbara Crooker

Barbara Crooker is a quiet soul and a richly talented woman. I first heard Barbara’s “voice” via a broadcast of ‘Prairie Home Companion’ when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems. I continued to discover her voice and work as it appeared in various publications, Rock and Sling, Christianity and Literature, The Christian Century, Spiritus,  and most recently in Tweetspeak Publishing’s “How to Read a Poem” by Tania Runyan (TSPoetry Press).

In February of 2014 we both attended the AWP Conference in Seattle and ‘happened’ to be at the same poetry workshop. I noticed her in line behind me while we waited to speak with the workshop leaders. Sounding just like a groupie I gushed about her work and unashamedly asked for her email address. We kept in touch and she agreed to participate in an ‘interview’ via this blog.

First, from  her most recent poetry collection Gold (Wipf & Stock, 2013) 
Sparklers
We’re writing out names with sizzles of light
to celebrate the fourth.  I use the loops of cursive,
make a big B like the sloping hills on the west side
of the lake.  The rest, a little a, r, one small b,
spit and fizz as they scratch the night. On the side
of the shack where we bought them, a handmade sign:
Trailer Full of Sparkles Ahead, and I imagine crazy
chrysanthemums, wheels of fire, glitter bouncing
off metals walls,  Here we keep tracing in tiny
pyrotechnics the letters we were given at birth,
branding them on the air.  And though my mother’s
name has been erased now, I write it, too:
a big swooping I, a little hissing s, an a that sighs
like her last breath, and then I ring
belle, belle, belle in the sulphuric smoky dark.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1.     1. Although you have undergraduate degrees in English Lit and Art History, (and a graduate degree in English Lit), you said your real education came from “The School of 3,000 Books.”
Tell me what you mean.
I’m one of a handful of writers without an MFA or a PhD; when I first started writing, I had small children, and if I’d wanted an MFA then, I’d have had to leave my family and live somewhere else for two years—no way that was going to happen!  Later, of course, the “distance” MFAs were born, where you only have to be in residence for a couple of weeks per year, but even that was impossible, partly because of the cost, and partly because my youngest child (who’s now 30) was diagnosed with autism, and so even being gone for two weeks would have been too much strain on the family.  
So I went to “school” by buying books—anthologies, individual collections, literary criticism, and the like, and studying, studying, studying.  Then the internet came into being; that vastly expanded the availability of critical articles, poets to read (especially in “the dailies,” Poetry Daily, Verse Daily), and The Writer’s Almanac, plus “the weekly,” Ted Kooser’s American Life in PoetryI’m constantly running into writers, especially beginning writers, who say they don’t read much poetry, and I don’t understand this; our job as writers is to be readers, first.
And I’m constantly learning.  I might fall in love with something, say a new form, and so I research and read as many poems as I can find that exemplify the form, then try my hand at it.  I’m also constantly falling in love with new writers, and falling back in love with old favorites; in both cases, I make sure  I buy their books. 

Continue reading “Female Faith Poet-Barbara Crooker”