BARB OF FIRE

Bancroft, Alan (tr). Twenty poems of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity with selected passages from Blessed Columba Marmion OSB. 203pp PBK

New and vivid translations of the twenty poems by Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity that were published in the Souvenirs shortly after her death in 1906. Accompanying each poem is a selected passage from Abbot Marmion, also newly translated. The editor and translator, Alan Bancroft, shows how strikingly the writings of the celebrated Benedictine Blessed Columba Marmion (beatified in 2000) and those of the young French Carmelite interlock. Elizabeth Catez, beatified in 1984, loved God with an astonishing intensity. These translations - of poems mainly unpublished before in English - together with a discerning introduction present to the reader an out-of-the-ordinary person indeed. She (like Abbot Marmion) answers in a direct manner a central question facing us all: 'What is our existence for?' Alan Bancroft is well known for his accomplished verse translation of, and commentary on, poems of St Therese of Lisieux.