Monday, September 26, 2016

Jane King

Jane King is a Saint Lucian poet, actor and theatre director. Her poetry collections include, Fellow Traveller which won the James Rodway Memorial Prize (awarded to her by Derek Walcott) and most-recently Performance Anxiety: New and Selected Poems (Peeple Tree, 2013). Her husband is the poet and playwright Kendal Hippolyte.

She is a Dean and senior lecturer in English at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St Lucia. She has served as a judge and chairperson for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She is also the founding director of Lighthouse Theatre Company in St Lucia.

Performers are Holy 2

It used to bother me when they said that God
made us to know him, love him and serve him.
It made our creation seem something of a whim
and it was difficult as a child to be overawed
by the concept of a being who needed so much laud.
A bit like the he-made-us-in-his-own-image thing
which seemed to justify so much bad seeing
because we all have somewhere a great need to be adored.

But walking down a brash Manhattan street one day
it occurred to me that the whole world is really a play.
God's into theatre, making all the scenes, casting
the roles, doing sets, lighting, costumes, in a lasting
whole. He needs us as an audience, needs comments from us.
Lord, I'm sorry that I was too slow. You are to be adored.

Posted with permission of the poet. Thanks to Burl Horniachek for suggesting this, and several other poets.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.