Travis Helms is the author of Blowing Clover, Falling Rain: a theological commentary on the poetic canon of the ‘American Religion’ (Wipf & Stock). His poetry and prose has been published in, or is forthcoming in, Image Journal, Poetry Northwest, Slushpile, New Haven Review, The Austin American-Statesman, North American Review, and Book 2.0, among other venues. He was the inaugural William W. Cook Frost Place Fellow, runner-up for the John Kinsella / Tracy Ryan Poetry Prize, and winner of the Arthur Sale Poetry Prize. An Episcopal priest serving the University of Texas campus, he is founder + curator of LOGOS, a liturgically-inflected reading series that congregates in an east Austin brewery, and an Executive Director of EcoTheo Collective. Links to his online publications can be found at wtravishelms.com.
This conversation with Travis Helms is deep and, at times heady, but I think its an important one. We talk about his poetry and his vocation, about his writing process and much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and I’m grateful to Travis for his time.
Travis’s book:
- Blowing Clover, Flowing Rain: A Theological Commentary on the Poetic Canon of the American Religion – 2020
Other books mentioned in this episode:
- Obit by Victoria Chang
- Normal Distance by Elisa Gabbert
- Unreality of Memory by Elisa Gabbert
- An Unexpected Light: Theology and Witness in the Poetry & Thought of Charles Williams, Micheal O’Siadhail, and Geoffrey Hill by David Mahan
Other people mentioned in this episode:
- Aristotle
- Anya Backlund
- John Berryman
- Jericho Brown
- The Rt. Rev. Andy Doyle
- Camille Dungy
- Bart Ehrman
- T. S. Eliot
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The Rt. Rev. James Folts
- Ariel Francisco
- Robert Frost
- Jorie Graham
- Malcolm Guite
- Marie Howe
- Joanna Klink
- Robert Lowell
- David Mahan
- Jason Myers
- Marilyn Nelson
- Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- The Rev. James Nutter
- Mary Oliver
- Grace Ortman
- Padraig O Tuama
- Pablo Picasso
- Ezra Pound
- Spencer Reece
- Roger Reeves
- The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson
- Auguste Rodin
- Carmen Gimenez Smith
- Wallace Stevens
- Henry David Thoreau
- Krista Tippett
- Walt Whitman
- Thomas Wolfe
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