I could not be more delighted to introduce Substack readers to my old friend Scott Cairns, a poet and writer who serves as the Curators Distinguished Professor of English emeritus at the University of Missouri. Scott and I have known and loved each other for 25 years or more, and we share the strange and beautiful identity of being people of deep faith who write.
I want to commend to you his poetry collections, including Slow Pilgrim, and his spiritual autobiography Short Trip to the Edge. Both have moved and shaped me and many of my students across the years. This conversation starts with his remarkable forthcoming collection Against Certainty.
Maybe—as we talk about here!—some literature teacher or professor convinced you that reading is about (as Billy Collins put it) tying a poem to the chair and beating the truth out of it. But I am grateful to Scott for wrestling with how we read poems—and scripture—in ways that open up the text, and open us up to the possibility of awareness and change. Doubt and mystery are not bad things.
A curated version of this interview will appear over at Baptist News Global as part of my ongoing interview series. Please listen and reflect on what Scott has to say about life, love, literature in this conversation.
Let’s start good trouble!
