I’m pleased to share the next installment of my prison pen pal Conway’s “City Elegy” poetry series below. This weekend, I’ll be attending the Becoming Church conference, a project of the Church of the Saviour in Washington DC, which will focus on Christian activism for prison reform. My other purpose in attending is to research
New Poetry by Conway: “City Elegy VI” Read More »
Happy Easter, dear readers! Today we celebrate the miracle of God’s love triumphing over sin and death. Two years ago, on Holy Saturday, my own little miracle came into the world: Shane had a wonderful time at the Easter service today at St. John’s. The handbell choir was his favorite! I bit my nails less
Hail Thee, Festival Day! Read More »
A couple of weeks ago, I asked my therapist, “Will I ever get to the bottom of this pile of bad feelings, or is this my life?” I was going through another patch of nightmares and becoming frustrated. No new information was coming up; the incidents were way in the past, by now more thoroughly
Survivors in Church: Insights from Disability Theology Read More »
The poetry website Utmost Christian Writers, edited by Nathan Harms, has offered me a regular home for my spiritual writing for over a decade. This year I was honored to win First Honorable Mention in their annual poetry contest. My entry, “Lord of the Storm“, was inspired by memories of a family vacation on Martha’s
My Poem “Lord of the Storm” at Utmost Christian Writers Read More »
Reiter’s Block welcomes back regular reader and contributor Donal Mahoney. The characters in Donal’s poems are drawn from our everyday life, but the issues they confront have cosmic significance. They’re fresh and down-to-earth yet also timeless, as the gospel stories must have sounded to their original audience. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart
Donal Mahoney: “Easter at the Nursing Home” Read More »
Winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Award in Poetry, Amanda Auchter’s exquisite new collection The Wishing Tomb (Perugia Press, 2012) surveys the cultural history of New Orleans over three centuries, in poems that quiver and shake with music and surge with the violence of floods. End-notes provide background on the incidents that inspired each
Two Poems from Amanda Auchter’s “The Wishing Tomb” Read More »
Poet and political historian Diana Anhalt moved to Mexico with her family in 1950, where her parents joined a community of left-wing expatriates who’d left the U.S. to escape Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist persecutions. She would live there for the next 50 years. The full text of her nonfiction book A Gathering of Fugitives: American
Two Poems from Diana Anhalt’s “Lives of Straw” Read More »