For the controversial Les Murray, "God is the poetry caught in any religion, caught, not imprisoned".

The publication of another collection of the best of Australian religious verse (the first was Les Murray's 1986 "Anthology" is an important event. It illustrates both the maturity and breadth of Australian poetry and also the continuing emergence of a peculiarly Australian religious sensibility - an Australian spirituality.

The greeting card genre of Christian verse irritates me thoroughly. The kind of poetry with enervating insights like

To be with the Lord all the day long
Needs in the depth of your heart a song

has given religious poetry a bad name, because it trivialises spirituality. You need great strength of patience to read doggerel like it.

If you are looking for this kind of poetry, Kevin Hart's anthology will disappoint you. In his preface, Hart, a poet and academic at Monash University, explains the criteria on which he based the choice of poems: religious feeling expressed in "distinguished poetry".

Aboriginal chants are represented, a Jewish midrash appears in strong verse, several Taoist meditations are here, and the spiritual sensitivities of several atheists are shared. Most of the selection, however, is twentieth Christian poetry, from the enigmatic, academic and intense poems of Francis Webb, to the open-hearted and accessible James McAuley.

Among the Anglicans, it is good to see a wide selection from Gwen Harwood - whom Ann Carnley has been enthusiastically introducing to recent Anglican Summer School participants.

Kevin Hart has arranged the poets alphabetically. For me, this adds to the enjoyment of each poem as individually crafted piece, and makes the book much easier to ladle into, on a kind of lucky dip search, and pluck a new word treasure at each opening.

For example, the arresting beginning of David Campbell's Among the Farms:
May He who sent His only Son
To torment on a cross of wood,
Look twice on animal and man
Caught in the narrow ways of blood.

Or Judith Wright's appeal To One Dying:
But come; the angel calls.
Deep in the dreamer's cave
the one pure source upwells
its single luminous wave;

and there, Recorder, Seer,
you wait with your cell.
I bring, in love and fear,
the world I know too well

into your hands. Receive
these fractured days I yield.

There is, of course, no way to review the content of a poetry anthology. What is presented in Kevin Hart's collection is a wide spectrum of thought, belief and image alerting our hearts to the spiritual dimension of life.

I paid $34.95 for my copy, and it's the kind of book that is worth owning - or giving as a significant gift to a word-sensitive Christian friend. But do at least check it out in your local library. It's a collection of value.
© Ted Witham 1993
First published in Anglican Messenger 1993