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The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry
The Turning Aside is about stepping out of our routines--like Moses turning from tending sheep, like a certain man selling his everything to buy a field--to take time to consider the ways of God in the company of some of the finest poets of our time. Turn aside with such established poets as Wendell Berry, Les Murray, Luci Shaw, Elizabeth Jennings, Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, and Christian Wiman--and respond to their invitation for us to muse along with them. Walk with poets from various parts of the planet, even though some of them are less known, whose words have been carefully crafted to encourage us in our turning aside. The Turning Aside is a collection of Christian poetry from dozens of the most spiritually insightful poetic voices of recent years. It is a book I have long dreamed of compiling, and it has grown beyond my mere imagining in its fulfillment. ""D. S. Martin's The Turning Aside offers a marvelous harvest of serious Christian poetry--an unusually rich and various representation of spiritual as well as poetic excellence. This is a treasury, a volume for the bedside table, there to be savored slowly--read as a prompt to meditation, prayer, and a deepened devotion to Scripture."" --David Lyle Jeffrey, FRSC, Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities, Baylor University ""I have been waiting for this collection for thirty years, literally. I am almost speechless. In this company of poets, lifters-of-the-veil between heaven and earth, I have no need for my own words. I only want to borrow theirs. And I shall--in worship, in church, in literary company. I am certain this magnificent collection will turn many aside from our mechanistic tromp through our days into the wondrous, piercing reality of God-with-us right here, right now."" --Leslie Leyland Fields, poet, speaker, and author of Crossing the Following Jesus through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt, and the Seas ""The Turning Aside is a spectacular collection bringing together under one roof the finest Christian poets of the age. Its pages provide awesome, inspiring, even mystical reading, with lines to linger over in meditation."" --Ron Hansen, author of The Kid ""This collection brings together an expansive, idiosyncratic, and intriguing group of poets, some you'll know well and others you'll be thankful to discover. Their work forms a rich banquet that is often surprising and, in the end, supremely artful. The book has the power to (paraphrasing Tania Runyan) 'singe the edges of our silent lives.'"" --Daniel Bowman Jr., author of A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country; Editor-in-Chief of A Journal of Art & Faith; Associate Professor of English, Taylor University D. S. Martin, the editor of this anthology and the Series Editor for the Poiema Poetry Series, is a Canadian poet living in Brampton, Ontario. His collections include Poiema (Wipf & Stock, 2008) and Conspiracy of Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis (Cascade, 2013), and one chapbook, So the Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (2007).
- GenresPoetry
262 pages, Hardcover
Published November 9, 2016
About the author
D.S. Martin
11 books5 followersD.S. Martin is a Canadian poet with two collections to his credit. His poetry has appeared in many journals in both Canada and the US, such as The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, Canadian Literature, Christian Century, Dalhousie Review and Queen's Quarterly. His chapbook is about his grandparents who were missionaries to China from 1923 to 1951. He writes about poetry for publications such as Arc, Books & Culture, The Cresset, and Image, and is the Music Critic for Christian Week. He lives in Brampton, Ontario with his wife and two teenage sons.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 17, 2017
A poetry book is literally like a mixed bag. Some things you will absolutely love, and others not as much. I based my rating on the amount of poems I ended up absolutely loving. There are some great ones in here.
January 30, 2025
A fantastic representation of the current renaissance in Christian poetry.
July 7, 2020
As a Christian with a newly re-awakened love of poetry, this book was the perfection introduction to contemporary Christian poetry for me. I was already familiar with poets like Wendell Berry, R.S. Thomas, and Scott Cairns, but the value of this book is that it introduced me to poets that in all likelihood I would not have otherwise encountered, poets like C.H. Cisson, Robert Siegel, and Robert Cording, just to name a few. This book, like any anthology, begins a journey, but does not complete it. For me, Martin has offered a wonderful guidebook to prepare me for this journey and to set me on my way. I am grateful for this book, dog-eared now like no other, and I highly recommend it.
May 22, 2022
An excellent anthology, showing off PPS' lineup and other luminaries of the 21st-century Christian poetry scene.
March 16, 2022
I don't particularly like poetry.
That may come as a surprise to people who know me, especially given my aspirations in the past to be a poet and the master's degree I did with poetry as a specialist subject... Perhaps I should refine my statement a bit: I don't particularly like many of the poems I come across.
But I utterly love the idea of poetry - the instinct and intention of it. And I love the high regard that poetry is given by some authors and thinkers - such as Walter Brueggemann, who posits poetry as a vital voice that extends into the realms of the prophetic.
You see, 'poetry' is actually a very vast term. And to say you don't like poetry is a bit like saying you don't like music or films. The categories are simply too big to make such statements meaningful. I have a friend who likes the homeliness, humour, whimsy and rhymes of Pam Ayres (you may need to look that up). And today I'm a lot more relaxed about that fact than I was when I took offense as a 20-year-old earnest would-be poet (as if my opinion ever really mattered anyway, despite my belief that it did). Because it's all about finding your thing - exploring and discovering poems you love, or that have some kind of impact on you.
That's why a collection is a good idea - a collection like this one (though admittedly anything like Pam Ayres is absent...).
The subtitle of the book is a bit cringey to my mind, but here you'll find a number of poets who crop up in the writings and discussions of other Christian thinkers (if you're reading and listening to Christian thinkers who hold poetry in esteem) - poets such as Richard Wilbur, Luci Shaw, Eugene Peterson, Wendell Berry, Les Murray (for our Aussie mates), Rowan Williams, Malcolm Guite, Christian Wiman and many others - 60 poets in total - including a Kentucky theopoetics email friend of mine, Dave Harrity (name drop). (Apologies for the male bias in my list here ... there does appear to be a fairly good representation in the actual contents list.)
The book pleasingly takes its main title from the R S Thomas poem 'The Bright Field', which incidentally, I can tell you by experience, is the kind of poem that can catalyse a shift in your life, with its lines: "...Life is not hurrying // on to a receding future, nor hankering after / an imagined past. It is the turning / aside like Moses to the miracle / of the lit bush, to a brightness / that seemed as transitory as your youth / once, but is the eternity that awaits you."
R S Thomas is included in the collection because the selection criteria was poets still alive in January 2000 - meaning this is a collection of 'contemporary poetry'. But at the publication year of 2016, the youngest poet in the selection was already as old as 34 - which seems a pity. Dave Harrity is the second youngest in the book and carries a refreshing voice in the selection.
Speaking of selection criteria, most of the poems are explicitly Christian in their subject, and a good number relate directly to stories and scripture passages from the Bible which, if nothing else, would probably make the book a good resource for ministers looking for sermon illustrations and such.
The version I had was an ebook, and ebook isn't very good for poems, because line length is variable - not helped by the fact that in parts of this ebook the formatting had gone very much awry in terms of line breaks and stanza gaps (I assume by publisher neglect) and so some of the poems presented like prose poetry instead.
Anyway, although there isn't a vast array of poetic styles represented (nothing especially 'experimental', street or avant garde and no haiku, for example), overall I recommend it if you're looking for a primer in Christian poetry, or a resource. I'm not aware of any better alternatives. The quality is high and there are discoveries to be made.
Poetry: relax, get amongst it and see what you discover. You may just end up liking it.
That may come as a surprise to people who know me, especially given my aspirations in the past to be a poet and the master's degree I did with poetry as a specialist subject... Perhaps I should refine my statement a bit: I don't particularly like many of the poems I come across.
But I utterly love the idea of poetry - the instinct and intention of it. And I love the high regard that poetry is given by some authors and thinkers - such as Walter Brueggemann, who posits poetry as a vital voice that extends into the realms of the prophetic.
You see, 'poetry' is actually a very vast term. And to say you don't like poetry is a bit like saying you don't like music or films. The categories are simply too big to make such statements meaningful. I have a friend who likes the homeliness, humour, whimsy and rhymes of Pam Ayres (you may need to look that up). And today I'm a lot more relaxed about that fact than I was when I took offense as a 20-year-old earnest would-be poet (as if my opinion ever really mattered anyway, despite my belief that it did). Because it's all about finding your thing - exploring and discovering poems you love, or that have some kind of impact on you.
That's why a collection is a good idea - a collection like this one (though admittedly anything like Pam Ayres is absent...).
The subtitle of the book is a bit cringey to my mind, but here you'll find a number of poets who crop up in the writings and discussions of other Christian thinkers (if you're reading and listening to Christian thinkers who hold poetry in esteem) - poets such as Richard Wilbur, Luci Shaw, Eugene Peterson, Wendell Berry, Les Murray (for our Aussie mates), Rowan Williams, Malcolm Guite, Christian Wiman and many others - 60 poets in total - including a Kentucky theopoetics email friend of mine, Dave Harrity (name drop). (Apologies for the male bias in my list here ... there does appear to be a fairly good representation in the actual contents list.)
The book pleasingly takes its main title from the R S Thomas poem 'The Bright Field', which incidentally, I can tell you by experience, is the kind of poem that can catalyse a shift in your life, with its lines: "...Life is not hurrying // on to a receding future, nor hankering after / an imagined past. It is the turning / aside like Moses to the miracle / of the lit bush, to a brightness / that seemed as transitory as your youth / once, but is the eternity that awaits you."
R S Thomas is included in the collection because the selection criteria was poets still alive in January 2000 - meaning this is a collection of 'contemporary poetry'. But at the publication year of 2016, the youngest poet in the selection was already as old as 34 - which seems a pity. Dave Harrity is the second youngest in the book and carries a refreshing voice in the selection.
Speaking of selection criteria, most of the poems are explicitly Christian in their subject, and a good number relate directly to stories and scripture passages from the Bible which, if nothing else, would probably make the book a good resource for ministers looking for sermon illustrations and such.
The version I had was an ebook, and ebook isn't very good for poems, because line length is variable - not helped by the fact that in parts of this ebook the formatting had gone very much awry in terms of line breaks and stanza gaps (I assume by publisher neglect) and so some of the poems presented like prose poetry instead.
Anyway, although there isn't a vast array of poetic styles represented (nothing especially 'experimental', street or avant garde and no haiku, for example), overall I recommend it if you're looking for a primer in Christian poetry, or a resource. I'm not aware of any better alternatives. The quality is high and there are discoveries to be made.
Poetry: relax, get amongst it and see what you discover. You may just end up liking it.
March 22, 2020
Great contemporary poetry is hard to find and this anthology has more than its fair share. Instead of having to sift through many mediocre poems, here, one is able to move forward confidently, slowly savoring every line. The act of reading becomes meditative, contemplative, prayerful.
D.S. Martin has done a wonderful job of collecting and curating various poets and their poems. I found I (typically) only read 2 or 3 poems at a time and, since the book is arranged by selected works from a specific author, every few pages brought about a new poet and, thus, a natural stopping point. It encouraged me to slow down, stop, and let the words really sink in... or even go back to reread more slowly.
There is a wide array of poetic style here, ranging from abstract and transcendent to, what I believe both poetry and Christianity should be, embodied in this very real world -fraught with visceral images and stories.
The reader, however, need not be a Christian to enjoy these poems. In fact, many of them are simply great poems written by poets who happen to be Christian.
Life, of course, is not all roses. Many poems are strikingly honest; some even brooding with doubt and the difficulty of life. The brief biographies accompanying each poet’s work, besides listing accolades and/or their books, mentions relevant snippets of their lives. Several have struggled with cancer, abandonment, or the pain of loss which wrenches the heart and beckons the reader to come alongside.
If you're connoisseur of poetry this collection of contemporary poets is a must read. If you're not really into poetry, this is a fantastic place to start. If you're somewhere in between, I highly advocate picking it up to relish and revel in. Take some time to “turn aside” from the busyness and relentless, planned path of your life. You won’t be disappointed.
D.S. Martin has done a wonderful job of collecting and curating various poets and their poems. I found I (typically) only read 2 or 3 poems at a time and, since the book is arranged by selected works from a specific author, every few pages brought about a new poet and, thus, a natural stopping point. It encouraged me to slow down, stop, and let the words really sink in... or even go back to reread more slowly.
There is a wide array of poetic style here, ranging from abstract and transcendent to, what I believe both poetry and Christianity should be, embodied in this very real world -fraught with visceral images and stories.
The reader, however, need not be a Christian to enjoy these poems. In fact, many of them are simply great poems written by poets who happen to be Christian.
Life, of course, is not all roses. Many poems are strikingly honest; some even brooding with doubt and the difficulty of life. The brief biographies accompanying each poet’s work, besides listing accolades and/or their books, mentions relevant snippets of their lives. Several have struggled with cancer, abandonment, or the pain of loss which wrenches the heart and beckons the reader to come alongside.
If you're connoisseur of poetry this collection of contemporary poets is a must read. If you're not really into poetry, this is a fantastic place to start. If you're somewhere in between, I highly advocate picking it up to relish and revel in. Take some time to “turn aside” from the busyness and relentless, planned path of your life. You won’t be disappointed.
July 22, 2017
Canadian poet and editor D.S. Martin's new anthology of contemporary Christian poetry is a vibrant collection of very different voices. There are delicately-crafted sonnets and works of free verse—lengthy epics and brief, vivid musings. Some of the poets are widely regarded as masters of Christian verse while other contributors are newer to the fold, yet clearly modern masters in their own right and certainly worthy of a wider readership. These are skilled poets boldly and imaginatively seeking God’s face, and this anthology is a truly unforgettable feast of words made flesh.
Full review here: https://adelegallogly.com/2017/05/27/...
Full review here: https://adelegallogly.com/2017/05/27/...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews