Heartscapes explores ‘the greater love’ we see in people and the world around us. The ‘heart’ poems are the prayers of a contemplative set in the context of a long life that has known tragedy and suffering as well as love and many friendships. Heartscapes also includes salty wisdom about real life, love poems, stories, eco-poems, poems inspired by animals, translations, poems in memory of loved ones – and much more. It thus resonates with all the living, human and animate that I encounter, as well as the landscape and seascape we are blessed with in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Hand in hand with indigenous peoples, Maori, Aboriginal, Pacific, I’m trying to recover a sense of the sacred we have lost in our western science- and info-based culture.
Raymond Pelly is an Anglican Priest & theologian resident (since 1977) in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Born in London in 1938, where he experienced the Blitz, he has worked as a teacher in Cambridge (UK), Boston/Cambridge (MA), Auckland (NZ). He is married to Barbara Craig, father of six children, two deceased. His book, Pilgrim to Unholy Places, investigates the implications of the Holocaust for Jewish-Christian dialogue and belief generally. His Heartscape poems explore ‘deep mind’, the well-springs of passionate creativity and a strong love that embraces people as well as land and seascape. Raymond speaks French& German; some of his best writing has been done in Contemplative/Carmelite Communities in Berlin, Weimar, Dachau & Esterwegen/Emsland.