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All good poetry has the power to transport and transform us, to inspire and challenge us, to comfort and heal us, and to hold up a mirror to the world around us.
In A Century of Poetry, Rowan Williams invites you to reflect with him on 100 poems from the past 100 years – poems with an originality and depth that can impel you to search your heart, and to explore your own experience and emotions at a deeper level.
Featuring the work of both famous and lesser-known poets, from different faiths, languages and cultures, A Century of Poetry gives you a fresh perspective on works you may be familiar with, as well as introducing you to poems you’ll be pleased to discover for the first time – or perhaps discover again.
These meditations, by a writer who is both a poet and a theologian, will open new doors into the experience of reading and absorbing great poetry, highlighting the ways in which their language and imagery can touch unfamiliar places in the heart and enliven the lifelong adventure of spiritual growth and exploration.
— A. N. Wilson, writer and broadcaster
‘Rowan Williams is one of our best readers of poetry. He is an “all-round” reader, attending to the full range of details, questions and possibilities in a poem, and arriving at a remarkable depth of thinking in response. . . In my experience, spending time with Rowan Williams’s writing changes your life, as does great poetry. This book offers both.’
— Romana Huk, Associate Professor of English, University of Notre Dame
‘Each poem in this collection is a door ajar, which Rowan Williams nudges open, inviting us in, where he carefully shows us around. He leaves us in a room of many windows, the light streaming in, our souls enriched, this book in our hand.’
— Frances Ward, Poetry Editor, Theology
‘This is a compendium of poems you could spend a lifetime absorbing. Rowan Williams has gathered a diverse array of poets that grapple with mystery, ultimacy, and the terrifying beauty of being human. These are deep wells, and Williams is a gentle guide into the depths of riches.’
— James K.A. Smith, editor in chief, Image
'For sheer diversity and depth, there is nothing else like this book, and it will offer new layers and depths with many future re-readings.'
— Revd Dr Malcolm Guite, in Church Times