Love Leans over the Table
Passionate and affirming, the poems in this collection have at their heart an intense hunger for life, not only this side of death but after. Celebrating both human and divine love, they trace a path from personal loss to spiritual struggle and eventual epiphany, finding echoes in the vividly imagined experience of various mystics, including Rabia of Basra, John Donne and Simone Weil.
‘The Boisterous Sobbings of Margery Kempe’ (included in this collection) has been commended in the 2022 National Poetry Competition. An amazing accolade given that there were 17,000 entries.
From the judges: “A striking evocation of the mind of a medieval mystic, a kind of apologia full of passion and compassion, culminating in the revelation that ‘God is not a noun, but a verb…’”
‘a rare poet of transcendence who expresses the inexplicable with grace’ – BEL MOONEY