Dark Night
Poems and Selected Prose
$25.14
- Paperback
224 pages
- Release Date
11 August 2026
Summary
The major devotional work by one of the greatest Christian mystics and Spanish poets, ‘Living Flame of Love, how tenderly you scorch me.’
The poetry of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross, has inspired and consoled for hundreds of years, influencing writers from James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill to T.S. Eliot and Mary Oppen. This new edition of his essential works, in a sensitive and luminous translation by Martha Sprackland, gathers John of the Cross’s c…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780241699294 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0241699290 |
| Author: | Martha Sprackland, John of the Cross, Dr Colin Thompson |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Imprint: | Penguin Classics |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 224 |
| Release Date: | 11 August 2026 |
| Weight: | 168g |
| Dimensions: | 15mm x 128mm x 198mm |
Critics Review
Sprackland’s new translation is both provocative and timely … In her consciously poeticising yet conscientious versions, the works themselves retain all the strangeness and burn that attracted TS Eliot and Salvador Dalí, Thomas Merton and Pope John Paul II – Fiona Sampson * Guardian *
Sprackland’s ear is particularly alive to movement and music … the result is a St John of the Cross who feels neither embalmed nor modernised, but newly legible. This translation doesn’t simply carry the poems across languages; it reanimates them – Leo Boix * Poetry Book Society Bulletin *
Martha Sprackland
John of the Cross
John of the Cross (1542–1591) was born in Fonteveros, Spain, and joined the Carmelite Order as a young man. After meeting St. Teresa of Ávila, he joined her attempts at reforming the order, embracing a more stringently monastic and studious life than Carmelites then practiced. Arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for his beliefs, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening during his captivity which inspired an outpouring of mystical poetry and writings, including The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, and The Spiritual Canticle. He was canonized as a saint in 1726.
Martha Sprackland
Martha Sprackland is an editor, writer, and translator from the north of England. She has translated poetry by Ana Gorria, Ver nica Viola Fisher, and Gladys Mendia, and short fiction by Sara Mesa. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Peirene-Stevns Translation Prize. Her debut collection of poems, CITADEL (Pavilion/LUP, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the John Pollard International Poetry Prize, and the Costa Poetry Award.
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