Poem of the Week: ‘A Course in Miracles’ by Sophie Collins
30 September 2024
This week, our Faber Poem of the Week is ‘A Course in Miracles’, from Who Is Mary Sue?, Sophie Collins’s fearless and brilliant debut, exploring themes of identity, shame, gender, trauma, composition and culture.
A Course in Miracles
Sacred figures manifest for reasons that are often unclear
Such manifestations have been referred to before now
as avatars
Those who have received divine avatars
provide differing accounts which
like the pain of a headache
cannot be proven false
Records show the sacred
as having revealed themselves
at the sites of burning homes
and in the folds of discarded towels
with a similar frequency
though the most credited apparitions
have always occurred in groves
Early indicators
of forthcoming manifestations include
the sudden need to cover an object fully
with your hands
fierce attachment to a gift initially discarded
confusion of past and future events
disagreements about colour
. . .
Sometimes a divinity is more
than a mortal can stand
and he or she will burn
Sometimes earth tremors
and/or thunder and lightning
and/or smoke rising
will preface an appearance
Sometimes an appearance
relies on the complicity of clouds
. . .
Copyright © Sophie Collins, 2018. Used by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.
Who is Mary Sue? by Sophie Collins is out now in paperback.
Buy the Book
Sophie Collins’s fearless and brilliant debut: a series of verse and prose collages, exploring themes of identity, shame, gender, trauma, composition and culture.