Iona E-Book

Kenneth Steven

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Paraclete Poetry
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 51

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

"Steven has an Irish monk's attentiveness to the fragility, mystery, and hidden beauties of things." —Peter Leithart, First Things The book is a gathering together of all of Kenneth Steven's poems concerning the island of Iona through the years. These comprise poems that have been published in journals both at home and abroad, and broadcast on BBC Radio. A lengthy introduction tells the story of the forging of those first links with Iona, and those that have come through adult years. This is a book both for those who know and love the island, and for those who may yearn to visit but have not yet had the chance. It's essentially a love song to a precious and an extraordinary place that has been the author's spiritual home from earliest childhood days.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FORIONA

“Kenneth Steven is a bard in the richest and fullest sense of the word. His poems are incantations, invocations of the Divine Presence in the wild places of the Highlands and in our hearts and souls. We do not read his words so much as find ourselves invited to inhabit them.”

—Carl McColman, author of Eternal Heart

“A pulse of something rare, quiet, and holy beats in the heart of these poems—call it the seasons turning in his beloved Scotland, call it a lyrical voice addressing and blessing this poet’s beloved recognition of the gifts of this earth, which he gives back so generously to us. In ‘Stopping To See’ he tells us ‘You are blown out, / have gone beyond all clocks and watches / ink a place where only being matters.’ And, indeed, these poems touch and dwell in the sacredness of pure presence, which is a miraculous and even deeper gift that puts us in touch with eternity. Only by books like this is our humanity fully revealed and redeemed.”

—Robert D. Vivian, author of Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening and Professor of English, Alma College

IONA

New and Selected Poems

KENNETH STEVEN

PARACLETE PRESS

BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS

2021 First Printing

Iona: New and Selected Poems

Copyright © 2021 by Kenneth Steven

ISBN 978-1-64060-630-2

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Steven, Kenneth C., 1968- author.

Title: Iona : new and selected poems / Kenneth Steven.

Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Paraclete Press, [2021] | Summary:

“These poems are essentially a love song to a precious and extraordinary place, the island of Iona”-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020049832 (print) | LCCN 2020049833 (ebook) | ISBN 9781640606302 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781640606319 (epub) | ISBN 9781640606326 (pdf)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PR6069.T444 I58 2021 (print) | LCC PR6069.T444 (ebook) | DDC 821/.914--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049832

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049833

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

FOR LINNIE AND RICH, WITH LOVE

Contents

INTRODUCTION

I

Finding

Strange

Listen

The Harp

The Somewhere Road

Luskentyre

Painting

Otter

Salt and Light

Honestly

Sabbath

Butterfly

Threads

June

Suilven

Benbecula

Whithorn

St. Kilda

Light

Moonshine

Geese

How Things Seem

Return

God

The Bread of Life

II

Columba

Clonmacnoise

The Illuminated Manuscript

Solace

The Hermit’s Cell

Island

The Death of Columba

Place

Iona Ferry

Coll

Iona

A Lark

The Well

Prayer

The Small Giant

West

The Thin Place

Lamb

Admission

Serpentine

The Bay at the Back of the Ocean

Salt

Logie

Doves

Hebrides

III

The Woodpecker

The Summer House

Somehow

Mother

Father

Farewell

Stopping to See

Night

Hinds

Instructions for Autumn

The Other Shepherd

Sight

The Winter of 2010

The Hills in the Window

The Road

The Land

Good Friday

Resurrection I, II, III

His Disciples

Imagine

In Michigan

Remembering the Amish

The Sacred Place

SHORT GLOSSARYof SCOTTISH GAELIC WORDS AND PLACES

INTRODUCTION

I grew up in Highland Perthshire, the only truly land-locked part of Scotland—a kind of heartland. There was nature in abundance: rivers, lochs, forests and hills—but no sea. I remember yearning for the sheer sound of the sea again and again in the communities where we lived, but the sea was for summer.

I had a father who was a true outdoorsman, and from earliest days my childhood was composed of exploring woods and climbing hills and visiting high lochs. Saturdays were for the outdoors; Sundays were for church and home. My mother, a Highlander, had grown up in the Free Church, a denomination particularly strict when it came to Sunday observance. For her there could be no “outdooring” then: often as a family we attended two services, on occasion even three.

I counted the days to the summer when I would have the sea once more—and the sea meant always the Atlantic coast. Then we would visit one or other of the Hebridean islands, or perhaps a special corner of the west coast. The jewel in the crown of those west coast islands was Iona. My mother had been taken there on holiday by friends at the time when she was finding faith: the island’s beauty and its deep spiritual resonance had a profound impact on her. I suppose we were on Iona every second or third summer: rarely did we stay at the same holiday cottage twice.

What was true of all these Hebridean landfalls was that they were utterly safe havens for children. Often, I would be up and out at five in the morning: running to beaches and searching for treasure. My parents worried about nothing more than barbed wire fences and dangerous tides. These were traditional island worlds, where in my childhood Gaelic was still the language of many homes, and of the church.

Iona was the island to which Columba had come with the Christian faith from Ireland, when the Irish were colonizing that part of the west coast of Scotland and the sea roads were busy with Celtic Christian pilgrims. Iona became a heart-stone in that Celtic Christian story: loud with excited talk and argument, a place where books were copied and ideas hammered out—indeed an island so loud with excited talk and argument that many hermit monks fled to find smaller islands and the loneliness of the desert sea so they might better hear the voice of God. Iona became busier still as Columba’s fame grew: in time it would be the island where the Book of Kells was created, the greatest of all the treasures of the Celts.