About

Photo of Kathleen Staudt outside in a beautiful flower garden

ABOUT
KATHLEEN

Kathleen Henderson Staudt (Kathy): has worked for many years  as a teacher, poet and spiritual director in the Washington DC area.  

POET

Kathy has published three volumes of poetry and edited two others. She was named a finalist in the 2021 Paraclete Poetry Contest. In her writing and in her scholarship she is most interested in how we embrace and experience our lives as creatures with bodies, seeking to be in whole and loving relationships with one another and with the mystery at the heart of our lives and of the cosmos.  

SCHOLAR

Kathy has a lifelong interest in the British modernist poet and artist David Jones, for whom art and poetry are “sacramental” activities.  He figured prominently in her Ph.D. dissertation in Comparative Literature at Yale, and in 1994 she published a full-length book on Jones. More recently she co-edited a collection of his previously unpublished writings, and in between has authored many articles and reviews about Jones’s work.    Believing that mind and heart work together, she embraces what the monastic tradition has called “The Love of Learning and the Desire for God.” She has pursued her work as an independent scholar, writing and speaking not only on Jones but on Evelyn Underhill, Denise Levertov, T.S. Eliot, Mary Oliver, and other modern poets and writers.  

TEACHER

Over the years Kathy has been part of the adjunct faculty at Wesley Seminary, Virginia Seminary and the University of Maryland, College Park.  Her classes have focused on literature, writing, spirituality, and explorations of vocation.   

SPIRITUAL GUIDE

Kathy offers workshops and Quiet Days on spiritual practice at many area churches and retreat centers, as well as courses and retreats on poetry as spiritual practice.  She is passionate about living and fostering a grounded, open-hearted and always-growing Christian faith. Trained in the art of Spiritual Direction, she finds that her one-on-one work with people, accompanying them on their faith journeys, has become the source of energy for all facets of her writing and teaching.   Her own life of prayer is nourished by worship and participation in the Episcopal Church, and by her experience as a Companion in the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross (SCHC) , an intentional community of women dedicated to a life of intercessory prayer, thanksgiving, social justice and simplicity of life.

An extensive interview with Kathy about her life and work can be found at https://www.radiogabriel.com/single-post/KathleenHendersonStaudt