Summoning religion, mythology and memory ‘Within the Shop of the Divine’

In "Within the Shop of the Divine" a new book of poems by Mary Gilliland, a Saint Anthony statue that glows in the dark lights the way into poems that connect siblings beyond death, that imagine a medieval chapel's construction and that visit a holy site of pilgrimage off the British coast.

Other poems in the collection consider Satanic bargains, consult astrology and remind us who Frankenstein really was - the scientist whose name "registers/in our roster/the monster." The natural world - plant life, animals, the sea - is never far off, and many ancient places are revealed.

For Gilliland, senior lecturer emeritus with the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, a poem begins with sound, when "an arc of language, a phrase or sentence sonorous or obvious or riddling wants to be written down," she said. "Part of the art is being found by the words."

"Within the Shop of the Divine" was published on Oct. 31. The College of Arts and Sciences spoke with Gilliland about the book.

Read the interview on the College of Arts and Sciences website.