Off the Shelf: U.Va. Theologian Releases New Poetry Collection

Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, “Wild Track: New and Selected Poems.” University of Notre Dame Press.

University of Virginia religious studies professor Kevin Hart was a poet before becoming a theologian. His latest collection, “Wild Track: New and Selected Poems,” was published last month and features several poems from his forthcoming book, “Barefoot."

Called “one of the finest poets writing in English today” by former U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, Hart has published more than a dozen books of poetry, plus books and essays on philosophy, religion and literary criticism. Translations of his poetry have appeared in Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian and Vietnamese, among other languages.

Hart, who was born in England and raised in Australia, joined the U.Va. faculty in 2007. He has received multiple awards for his poetry, including the Christopher Brennan Award and the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry twice.

He earned degrees from the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne.

An excerpt from “The River”:

There is a radiance inside the winter woods
That calls each soul by name:
Wind in young boughs, trees shaking off thick coats of snow,

The rattle of frozen rain on a barn roof: all these
Will help you lose your way
And find a silence older than the sky

That makes our being here a murmur only,
That makes me walk along the river ...