Preface

Christianity and Literature Vol. 60, No.3 (Spring 2011) PREFACE Paul Contino, Co-Editor Christianity and Literature is very pleased to present this special issue devoted to the poetry of English poet and critic Geoffrey Hill. The Editors are especiallygrateful to EmilyMerriman for her service as "SpecialEditor" for this issue. As Emily explains in her Afterword-which provides a fine overview of the issue-the essayscollected here had their genesis in a CCLsponsored roundtable session, "Faith and Fable in the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill:' presented on December 30,2009. That year,CCL awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award to Mr. Hill in recognition of his achievements in both poetry and criticism, and the waysin which Christian themes and concerns have informed his work over its sixty-year span. We are especially grateful to Mr. Hill for permitting us to publish the new poems which grace this issue. Geoffrey Hill was born in 1932 in Worcestershire, England. He read English in Keble College, Oxford, where his first poems were published. From 1954-1980 he taught at the University of Leeds, and from 1981-1988 taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From 1989-2006 he served as University Professor and Professor of Literature and Religion at Boston University. Since 2006 he has lived in Cambridge, England, with his wife, Reverend Alice Goodman. In 2008 Oxford University Press published his Collected Critical Writings, edited by Kenneth Haynes; in 2013 they will publish Hill'sCollected Poems: 1952-2012. In 2010,he was elected Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Geoffrey Hill is often called the greatest living poet writing in the English language. Our hope is that the essaysand poems presented in this issue will move readers to further explore the difficult beauty and moral intelligence of the poetry of Geoffrey Hill. 397 ...