This Transfigured Chapel
of the Threads
Poems
Available from
About
I’m delighted my (seventh!) collection has recently been published by Wipf and Stock. I hope you love its wintry cover as much as I do! For me, the trees in this snowy landscape persist like poems, vulnerable but also resilient, together and apart, and illuminated by the low, gold sun.
As readers of my work might know, I have been inspired by the Carmelite nun Saint Therese of Lisieux (1873-97) for many years, but only in this collection have I attempted somewhat to blur the borders of self and saint. These poems follow a loosely chronological and biographical trajectory, drawing on sparks of image and memory. But they are not principally biographical. I wrote many of them during the lockdown months of 2020: night by night, as a poetic discipline, and often in a sort of trance. They are all short: some are linefeed; others are fragments of prose poetry. While Therese’s life and theology are always to some extent present in the poems, they contain something of my experience too – an experience that includes doubt and darkness as well as the mystery of creativity and faith itself. It is my intention that the whole forms a chapel from poetic threads and fragments of faith.
“Saints and the interface between the mystical and the human are at the heart of Sarah Law’s poetry. In This Transfigured Chapel of the Threads, she steps back from the documented life of Thérèse of Lisieux and picks up phrases and ideas–the threads of the title–from her writings, to underpin these imagistic and philosophical poems. ‘I write what I want to believe’ says both the poet and the ventriloquized saint, in this very human, lucid book of contemplative and intriguing poems.”
–Rupert Loydell, author of The Age of Destruction and Lies
_”Written with Sarah Law’s usual precision and grace, these poems take us deep into the spiritual struggles and epiphanies of one of the greatest saints in modern history. Through recording the unseen moments, the unrecorded thoughts (always as fruit of long research and discernment), Law’s work brings us to a marvelous closeness with Thérèse. This is poetry of quiet and extraordinary power borne of great contemplation–and it stokes great contemplation in the reader.”
–Sally Read, editor of 100 Great Catholic Poems
_”Gentle. Tender. Lovely. Sarah Law skillfully takes the reader on a quiet journey, carefully and imaginatively unfolding a life honest in its humanity but devoted to the sublime. Each profound tale of contemplative grace and longing expertly provides a glimpse of the spiritual storm inside a cloistered saint. Through Thérèse, Law draws out beauty and the divine from everyday moments–often with questioning, but always returning to love’s restorative power. Read it slowly and with wonder.”
–Veronica McDonald, editor and founder, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal
_”‘Here in my cell I am newly conceived, ‘ writes Sarah Law in this astonishing and absorbing meditation on the life of a beloved saint. Each poem offers a new insight on Thérèse’s experience, and the whole book is studded with bright imagery. Law is a writer of great imaginative empathy, which she balances with formal control–her brief, graceful poems land lightly as snowflakes. These poems invite a response of both heart and mind, and reading them is a remarkable pleasure.”
–Kathryn Simmonds, author of Scenes from Life on Earth
three poems from
This Transfigured Chapel of the Threads
I am just a little brush ⸺
fine-haired, slim-tipped,
made to amend a smudge
with my whitening touch,
just a tiny hand⸺I
follow the outlines,
barely look beyond them.
Yet this discipline
has been a gift to me,
and when I lift my fingers
to your brow, it is to add
my dab of light.
***
I offer you apologies, Mon Père, for
today I have to write to you of nothing,
the nothing life of penitence and prayer,
the nothings of the recreation hall, where
sometimes I have acted out my nothings
to no critical acclaim. The nothing mornings
when my head is as a void. The never-
ending trial of nothing-ever-comes⸺ah, not
until belief has come to utter nothing
will I start to understand.
***
I used to imagine my name was written in the stars. I only had to raise my hand and point to feel all heaven flowing in my veins. Now I all but forget to look; I am concerned only with the flowers in my arms, and to whom I may give them.
Sarah Law 