Books

Recently released from Wipf and Stock publishers

VIRIDITAS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS is now available! —

Drawing on the spirituality of St. Hildegard of Bingen, these poems tap into the energy of green-ness (viriditas) as it pulses through nature and through the times of loss, disorientation and fresh hope that we encounter in our lives.  Sinking into the experience of sacred place, they lead us into woodlands and ocean beaches, local gardens and distant places of pilgrimage. Through celebration and elegy, biblical story and the natural world, these poems invite readers to experiences of meditation and even prayer, embracing all that is green and growing in our lives.

—-Kathleen Staudt’s Viriditas is a joyous tribute to nature, green in shoot and bough. In the tradition of Mary Oliver, her poems revel in the seasons closely observed, from the colors and shapes of leaves to the subtle hues of love.  Like a wise bee, Staudt confects the honey of contemplation from all the changes and chances of this life.  — Barbara Newman, Northwestern University

—-Kathleen Staudt’s Viriditas is a ribbon of bright light, a gift that invites us to celebrate with her the greening energy of the sacred in poems that open to us like seeds in a soft spring rain.  Her poems are an invitation to discover anew how the experiences of being human can daily point us toward the miracles to be found in each moment. “Breathing in.  Breathing out.”  — Michael Glaser, Maryland Poet Laureate 2004-2009

Order directly from the publisher Wipf and Stock, or visit my author page on amazon for access to this and other books of mine, including the kindle version of this one.   Watch my events tab for updates on book launches, interviews etc.  If you’d like me to send you a signed copy, please message me through the contacts tab of this website and we can work that out.  

SHAPING A FAITHFUL LIFE: DISCERNMENT AND DISCIPLESHIP FOR YOUNG ADULTS 

Through scripture, prayer and poetry as well as the rich resources of Christian tradition from Ignatian and Benedictine discernment techniques to Quaker clearness practices, Shaping a Faithful Life offers an opportunity to creatively explore life’s big questions. Readers will learn to listen for God’s lead in the choices that they face around relationships, time and money, and the kinds of work that awaken purpose and passion in their daily life, both in the present and for the future.

As a young adult, I’ve discovered that the spiritual journey makes you ask a lot of questions. Kathleen Staudt’s wise and faith-filled book is a welcome companion on the way.
— Selma Khenissi, journalist and writer

THIS THING CALLED POETRY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS BY YOUNG ADULTS WITH CANCER 

The poetry in this collection fiercely bends along and speaks to the jagged shape of the suffering body. These poems give a bold and nuanced language to the trauma of illness and the fragile promise of wellness.
— Thomas Dooley, Poet in Residence, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital

In poems that are powerfully evocative of the physical and emotional complexities of living with cancer, this stunning gathering of poems embraces the wide-range of responses: From fear and anger to curiosity, grief and gratitude for life. They invite us to step into the gray light of the cancer ward with its unknown worlds of hope and despair as we move down ”a corridor. . . to a door “ where something uninvited has “written our name,” and into a room that will leave us with “a tracery of scars.” This room, paradoxically, helps us realize that we all live with life’s radical ambiguity and that at any moment we too might discover we have reached that unwanted marker of “before and after.
— Michael Glaser, Poet Laureate of Maryland 2004-9

GOOD PLACES: POEMS 

There is a sacramental light that inhabits all of Kathy Staudt’s poems. Place is important to Kathy, whether it be a small patio filled with birdsong, the kitchen in candlelight, or a dark church. She writes in luminous detail about the ordinary contained in these places. She welcomes us to experience the changing seasons of a lifetime, motherhood, marriage, moving to a new home through the changing seasons of the natural world. We are drawn into our connectedness to each other and creation with stunning images of trees and birds and sky. For Kathy, the seasons are all grace filled whether they be seasons of joy or sorrow, darkness or light. Her poetry reminds us of what it means to be present to both the good and the bad weather of our lives for all that they can show us about the blessing of being alive.
— Emily Blair Stribling, author of The Mercy of Light

WAVING BACK: POEMS 

Kathleen Henderson Staudt’s poems capture with exquisite tenderness and accuracy the complexities of our parenting lives. Savoring each miraculous moment, these poems rise up out of the details and patterns and clutter of our busy lives to reveal the treasures that both surround us and breathe within us. Grinning, wise, gentle and ironic, there they are, waving back!
— Michael S. Glaser, Poet Laureate of Maryland and author of Being a Father

“ . . . and another world to live in—whether we expect to pass wholly over into it or not—is what we mean by having a religion,” said George Santayana, the Naturalist philosopher. Kathleen Staudt’s poems, religious in the deepest sense, show us that that world is not distant but exists right here, right beside—or inside—our daily living; in our quiet acts of empathy, compassion, praise and adoration.
— Anne Becker, Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, and author of The Good Body and The Transmutation Notebook

ANNUNCIATIONS 

Staudt’s poems take the reader inside Scripture, behind the familiar scenes and between the lines you thought you knew well. As a result, the ancient text comes alive, becomes intimate. The reader walks with God in the cool of the evening, laughs with Sarah, discovers what it feels like to be healed or be on the receiving end of a miracle. Staudt’s Annunciations put you on intimate terms with the Bible.
—Peter S. Hawkins, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Literature, Yale University

Like a crystal clear bell, Kathleen Henderson Staudt’s Annunciations call us to enter the Scriptures anew. Lending her insightful poetic imagination to biblicsl characters, including –wonderfully—God, Staudt gives fresh voice to the human and divine longing for one another. . . . Annunciations will enrich any Scripture study, meditation practice, or retreat.
—Peggy Rosenthal, author of The Poet’s Jesus and Praying Through Poetry

It is almost a truism that religious poetry can be the most difficult to write: so much of it is either flat or sentimental. But not when Kathleen Staudt listens to the Biblical texts as she does and interprets them with intelligence and feeling! Her perceptive and lively readings open up the biblical stories in fresh and exciting ways. This is a book for savoring slowly, then revisiting again and again.
—A. Katherine Grieb, Meade Professor of Biblical Interpretation and New Testament, Virginia Theological Seminary

DAVID JONES ON RELIGION, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 

Unpublished Works (Bloomsbury: Modernist Archives Series, 2018
David Jones (1895–1974) is acknowledged increasingly as a pioneering poet and visual artist … This addition to the Jones corpus confirms those judgments while opening new lines of scholarly inquiry, particularly concerning his stances on crucial, and controversial, political issues of his era … Kathleen Henderson Staudt provides a capacious, judicious historiographical survey that orients tyros to this burgeoning field while enriching veteran scholars’ interpretations. Staudt’s distilled edition of the Hopkins essay presents Jones’s reflections on the Victorian poet-priest as a proleptic modernist and on the resultant “mystery” of profound affinities existing between artists separated by decades, even centuries. Thomas Berenato’s exhaustive manuscript study of this article further includes cogent encapsulations of core aspects of Jones’s worldview, especially his theology and aesthetics, many of which are reiterated in the 1973 interview and which informed his political outlook.
— The University Bookman

AT THE TURN OF A CIVILIZATION: DAVID JONES AND MODERN POETICS 

(1994) University of Michigan Press