Susan McCaslin

Fourteen Canadian poets respond to the question "How does a longstanding spiritual discipline connect to the practice of writing poetry?" (9). Their responses, as well as a representation of each one's poetry, are the focus of this anthology.

While mainly centered in "Judeo-Christian (or pre-Christian religious heritage)", the responses of the poets reflect a diversity of approach to spiritual practice, such as "mindful sitting, meditative walking, dream work, deep listening, and attentiveness to the spiritual dimensions of the natural world" (9). For some of the poets, the poetry itself is the response to a spiritual calling.

Edited by Susan McCaslin, this is a followup of sorts to a 1998 anthology focused on the question she posed to poets then: "How does your spirituality inform or permeate your poetry?" (9). McCaslin has also had several books of her own poetry published and teaches college level English.

While reading the responses of the poets, as well as McCaslin's own commentary, I found that much of what is being spoken about is, at the core, the same as what I'm reading in Buddha Mind in Art (Baas, 2004). Regardless of religious or spiritual tradition, the concepts of silence, contemplation, mindfulness, meditation resurface in relationship to creativity. Reading this anthology, with its more Christian slant, caused me to set aside many of my own resistances to Christianity and to really listen to what was being said. Given that much of the material available on mindfulness comes from a Buddhist tradition, this anthology helps to add another dimension to my studies of mindfulness and creativity.… (meer)

Susan McCaslin is a married mother who teaches English Literature at Douglas College in Burnaby, and who has written here a body of work at once 'enigmatic and mystical, erotic and spiritual,' as the back cover blurb puts it. Indebted to Rumi, St. John of the Cross, Blake and Kathleen Raine, McCaslin's poetry celebrates, 'in powerful and incantatory lines, the angel within...' Graced with a lovely Leonardesque Miles Lowry painting entitled 'Between the Worlds' for its cover art, this Ekstasis paperback edition is Susan McCaslin's first full-length book of poems. The same artwork was used on the cover of the prospectus number zero of my own now-defunct publication, La Rosa in 1988. The cover art shown here, generated by Amazon, is not the correct cover art that is seen on the copy in my possession. There is a black and white photo of the author on the back cover by Mark Haddock. Some of the 'Locution' poems were published previously in such publications as Anima: The Journal of Human Experience, Moksha Journal and Descant. Printed and bound by Hignell Printing of Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1995, it received federal government funding from the Canada Council and also provincial funding from the Cultural Services Branch of British Columbia.… (meer)