‘Amends’ (Black Herald Press, 2026)

The result of a sustained period during which poet and novelist Richard Skinner studied mysticism and spirituality, these deft and unaffected poems seek to break down the categories and concepts that block the consciousness from God, in line with William James who described both religious and mystical experience as a ‘pure consciousness event’. Drawing on his deep reading of poets such as Wallace Stevens, R. S. Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, as well as theologians like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart and Simone Weil, Skinner sees poetry in the same way as a mystic may see prayer, i.e. as a mechanism of contemplation that might help him reach what the theologian Bernard McGinn describes as a ‘place of suspended wonder’. Hoping to attain a state of epiphany through poetry, Richard Skinner moves beyond the last barrier of language so as to convey a pure reality, that of the poem as the fulfilment of faith.

‘Poems to spend contemplative time with, portals and doorways, transcendent humility.’ — Sarah Westcott, author of Pond

‘Richard Skinner’s searing sonnets embody an important contemporary pilgrimage. A walker in life, we accompany him in a meditation that encounters the limits of poetry and faith. (...) This is poetry that maps the possibilities of transformation, a map that illumines and rewards.’
​— Cathy Galvin, author of Ethnology

‘These are meditative poems of depth, reach and yearning. In a frank search for spiritual meaning, Skinner observes the world and the self with ungraspable vividness. Neither autobiographical nor confessional, these spare, finely honed poems don’t speak from any fixed religious or spiritual viewpoint but rather admit doubt and paradox in language that welcomes the reader.’ — Nancy Mattson, author of Finns and Amazons

You can buy a copy here.