Bulletins from Immortality: God in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

Speaker

Ben Myers is Professor of Theology and Literature at Alphacrucis University College. His publications include Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams, The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism, and a forthcoming book on God in western literature

Abstract

 The 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson returned constantly in her poems to the question of God. No author since George Herbert depicted God in so many surprising forms and guises. Although Dickinson was more a poet of doubt than a poet of belief, she remained profoundly invested in religious language and ideas. The concept of God, for Dickinson, has a way of ‘italicising’ aspects of human experience that would otherwise be impossible to identify or articulate. In this talk, Ben Myers will introduce Dickinson’s poetry and will show how this brilliant and sensitive poet held up God like a lamp to investigate the deepest enigmas of her own experience.