The Blue Seraphim, which light up heaven with their love of God. Under the Blue Seraphim,
by Deirdre Cartmill
(Arlen House, €15.00 / £13.00)
Under the Blue Seraphim, published by the excellent Arlen House, is Deirdre Cartmill’s fourth collection of poetry. At a time when the sea of faith appears to be going out, it is good to see a poet who affirms the light, especially the light of religious belief.
In the beginning, she finds her dying mother fumbling over her rosary beads, lost in her duvet. When her beloved mother dies, the poet shatters like a glass, unsure if the pieces will ever come back together or fit the same way. But eventually she arrives at a place where what she thinks is the end is only the beginning as Latin chants lull her into a deeper place where words aren’t needed and the invisible becomes visible.
Under the Blue Seraphim is a canticle, a Song of Songs where the word she doubted re-enters her heart, sloughing off all that chains her. In poems that are visionary, even mystical, many of them written when she was writer-in-residence for Belfast Cathedral, the poet yearns for the Greater Light, the beating heart of God, which she knows she has never left, where the light surrounds her, flows through her, subsumes her.
She rises up into the Light and her soul cries out is ecstasy, her body falls away and in the nothingness she is everything, a wave in a sea of love. She is in the beating heart of God and the Light is around her, the Light is within her, she herself is Light and has always been Light and when she falls back into her body, knowing she is Light, she is back at the start of the path.
Under the Blue Seraphim will be read with pleasure and with profit by all who walk from darkness into light. I, for one, am glad I read it.