It’s both difficult and necessary to counter the rationalist mode of speaking (and thinking, for that matter) that has dominated Christian theology for centuries, especially within Western traditions that prize reason and intellectualism as superior forms of knowing. These associations feel so hard-baked that it might seem strange to approach theology from a primarily artistic or creative perspective, even given that the bible itself is replete with narrative, poetry, and story, and indeed are the chosen mediums through which God has often delivered his revelations to humanity. Fortunately, narrative theology, theopoetics, and aesthetic theology are thriving academic fields that include many voices—male and female—celebrating the affective, imagistic, and non-rational aspects of religious God-talk. But even apart from considerations of current trends within more formal theological disciplines, women of faith have been writing poetry as an expression of their spirituality and theological convictions for many years. It’s something I try to call attention to whenever the opportunity arises, so in honor of #SeptWomenPoets, here are five female poets for whom faith, religion, and spirituality are central themes in their art.
1. Denise Levertov
“What is it?
An accord.
Break out, frog,
Sing, you who don’t know
anything about anything.”
from “The Communion”
In so much of her work, Denise Levertov creates intimate atmospheres in which the speaker stages a private conversation with the forces of spirituality themselves, whatever they may mean or wherever they are to be found by the speaker at the time of writing and contemplation. Her collection The Stream & The Sapphire is most emblematic of her engagement with religious themes, and in poems like “The Communion,” scenes from nature unfold like religious rituals. But it’s also possible to imagine that Levertov makes use of the communion sacrament to represent some instinct within the speaker’s own psyche, potentially representing knowledge, initiative, or the will towards union with nature, reality, and the self—all well-established motifs in Christian mystical writings.
2. Louise Erdrich
“I must become small and hide where he cannot reach.
I must become dull and heavy as an iron pot.”
from “Fooling God”
Louise Erdrich is known mainly for her novels, but her poetry is equally as captivating. Her work often grapples with questions of cultural identity, in particular her own Native American heritage. Erdrich is known for representing that heritage within Anglo-American literary forms and traditions and for exploring the ways in which those legacies might conflict and/or creatively coexist. Faith themes are prominent throughout her work, and her second book of poems Baptism of Desire concerns spirituality as it is shaped by both Roman Catholicism and Indigenous spiritualities, both of which Erdrich grew up practicing.
3. Aisha Sharif
“But here is faith, that security checkpoint
you thought you had already passed.”
from “To Muslims Who Do Not Say, Salaam”
Aisha Sharif is a Missouri poet investigating the complex interactions between belief and cultural identity. She is an African American Muslim woman whose work explores “how racial, gender, and religious identities align, separate, and blend.” In her debut collection, To Keep From Undressing, faith, gender, and ethnic conscience all seem to be at war with one another, but her use of inner dialogue and second-person perspective successfully illustrates the ultimate wholeness of what at first appeared to be a highly fragmented voice. Imperial over-culture looms in the background, and in many ways, these poems are small testaments to the hostile nature of both secularism and Islamophobia. To maintain her engagement with religious faith in the face of these hostilities reads as nothing less than heroic.
4. Autumn McClintock
“We could not separate ourselves
from these creatures as we did from one another.”
from “Home”
Like Levertov, nature, family, everyday household items, and the body are subjects of McClintock’s spiritual gaze, all of which have historically been associated with women and femininity and, by extension, inferiority. In many instances, the opening of her poems are prefaced by a scripture verse, only to be vacant of explicit religious themes altogether in the remainder of the poem. In “Home,” Genesis 11:4 frames a domestic scene that’s both modern and familiar. The effect is that the reader is set up to view ordinary, non-religious phenomena through a sacred lens. Politically, this female-coded, domestic context is one that patriarchal religions have positioned as devoid of inherent sanctity or spiritual profundity, so to locate the divine in the home or in the everyday or in intimate relationships is more subversive that one might suspect at first glance.
5. Abigail Carroll
“We read that the Word
spoke forth creation, but
I’m not so sure creation
wasn’t sung into being…”
from “Genesis”
Abigail Carroll is a Christian poet who also serves as a pastor of arts and spiritual formation. Her work is deeply theological and poetic, engaging classic Christian concepts like the Word and the creation event in order to (re)articulate Christian themes with fresh, vivid imagery and cutting phrases that imbue them with an enchantment and a vitality that’s hard to ignore. Many of her poems also have a distinctly ecological character: for example, her most recent poetry book, Habitation of Wonder, is “an offering of poems that travel the intersection of the natural landscape and the landscape of spirit.” In each of these poets’ oeuvre, the long overdue work of reclaiming and reintegrating subject matter deemed unworthy of theological deliberation is finally accomplished, bringing God’s light to bear on aspects of our being and our earthly experience which have always been holy.
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