Amends
poems
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RICHARD SKINNER
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​forthcoming​
Isbn 9782919582402 – September 2026 – 50 pages, 130 x 170 – 9 € / £8​
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The result of a sustained period during which poet and novelist Richard Skinner studied mysticism and spirituality, these deft and unaffected poems seek to break down the categories and concepts that block the consciousness from God, in line with William James who described both religious and mystical experience as a ‘pure consciousness event’.
Drawing on his deep reading of poets such as Wallace Stevens, R. S. Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, as well as theologians like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, and Simone Weil, Skinner sees poetry in the same way as a mystic may see prayer, i.e. as a mechanism of contemplation that might help reach what the theologian Bernard McGinn describes as a ‘place of suspended wonder’.
Hoping to attain a state of epiphany through poetry, Richard Skinner moves beyond the last barrier of language so as to convey a pure reality, that of the poem as the fulfilment of faith.​​
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Load
ignis aurum probat
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The human soul must be divided
and dissolved into God
without remainder.
Fire tests gold and the remainder,
as what’s left over in long division,
must be carried.
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‘Poems to spend contemplative time with, portals and doorways, transcendent humility.’
—Sarah Westcott, author of Pond (The Braag Press)
‘Richard Skinner’s searing sonnets embody an important contemporary pilgrimage. A walker in life, we accompany him in a meditation that encounters the limits of poetry and faith. His brief, in the opening poem, is to “lose the knowledge and experience the self”. There are flickerings of transcendence along the way, acknowledging that “walking is nothing but a controlled way of falling”, a falling which contains surrender to love. As we follow his lines, we are also changed. This is poetry that maps the possibilities of transformation, a map that illumines and rewards.’
—Cathy Galvin, author of Ethnology (Bloodaxe Books)
‘These are meditative poems of depth, reach and yearning. In a frank search for spiritual meaning, Skinner observes the world and the self with ungraspable vividness. Neither autobiographical nor confessional, these spare, finely honed poems don’t speak from any fixed religious or spiritual viewpoint but rather admit doubt and paradox in language that welcomes the reader. Quotations and allusions range from Caedmon to the Psalms, from Isaiah to Wallace Stevens, Pasolini to Bresson. Here is mystery without tricksiness, but with occasional erudition that resonates and images that intrigue: ‘A knotless thread drawn painless through the heart.”’
—Nancy Mattson, author of Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press)
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Richard Skinner is a novelist, poet and essayist. He has published three novels with Faber and three collections of essays. He has also published eight books of poems, including Crossing Paths (with Jean Atkin, Black Cat Press, 2026), White Noise Machine (Salt, 2023), Dream into Play (Poetry Salzburg, 2023). He also runs Vanguard Editions, which publishes books of poetry, essays, stories, translations and art-writing plus, since 2020, the annual poetry magazine 14. He is Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy and studied mysticism at Sarum Theological College, 2024-6.
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https://richardskinner.weebly.com/
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