Parish of the Dead

Abstract

This essay offers an introduction to the poetry of Peter Scupham. Through close readings of individual poems, I demonstrate the beauty and formal accomplishment of his work, and I argue that his poetry embodies his sense of a living Christian tradition, one that also inheres in the English landscape. I further argue that this tradition connects the dead to the living, and the remote in time to more recent English history. The particular Christian ethos of Scupham’s poetry is one in which tradition, order, design, meaning, and essence are paramount.