Bruce speaks about his ninth book of poetry, Prayershreds, (Orison Books 2023) with Cathedral Arts poetry consultant Evan Craig Reardon.
Suppose the shreds of our prayers and of our faiths could themselves become a radical, new form of devotion. In Prayershreds, Bruce Beasley confronts the apocalyptic zeitgeist of our time (pandemic, isolation, political turmoil, environmental catastrophe) and the crisis of faiths in the human future. These poems make a sermon of the vocabulary of doubt as they summon a chorus of voices, ancient and spiritual; scholarly, philosophical, and even technological. In these fractured and ecstatic psalms, Beasley makes his ruptured way toward a faith that relies, not on dogmas and creeds, but on a broken utterance for a torn and living faith. Learn more about Bruce Beasley at the poet's website.
Cover art by Rosamond Purcell
Bruce Beasley is a professor of English at Western Washington University and the author of nine collections of poems, including most recently Prayershreds (Orison Books, 2023). His books have won three national competitions: the Colorado Prize (selected by Charles Wright) for Summer Mystagogia; the Ohio State University Press/Journal Award for The Creation; and the University of Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series Award for Lord Brain. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Artist Trust of Washington and three Pushcart prizes in poetry. His work appears in Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, POETRY, Gettysburg Review, Yale Review, and many other journals.
Evan Craig Reardon is a poet and is the electronic services librarian for Nashotah House Theological Seminary. He is archives and poetry consultant for the Cathedral of All Saints. Evan holds master’s degrees in Library and Information Science and English Literature. Before he moved to Wisconsin (where he also is a seminarian), Evan was the librarian and archivist for The Flow Chart Foundation, where he currently serves on the board. Read two of Evan's poems HERE
Cathedral Arts new and upcoming:
Michael Joyce, who participated in our online Hidden Cathedral Poetry Festival 2021, has published a book of poems conceived during the pandemic, CAPRICORN, VENUS DESCENDANT: 50 Poems of Pandemos, Karkinos, & Eros. Michael will be reading with other Broadstone poets at the New York City Poetry Festival on July 29th. Michael also reads poems and discusses the book online at Tupelo Quarterly.
Next week, the Cathedral Arts Blog will feature the art of Wendy Ide Williams. An exhibition of her recent work and that of Allen Grindle opens at Laffer Gallery in Schuylerville, NY, on June 24. See the exhibition page HERE.
Save the date: On November 4, 2023, poet, priest, singer-song writer and scholar Malcolm Guite will speak on the Psalms at the Cathedral of All Saints. His recent book is David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms. Read his poems and essays, and find his recordings and books at https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/.
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