I have a keen interest in translation as a practice of close reading and interpretation as well as a means for making obscure texts available to Modern English-speaking audiences.

Though a departure from my usual period focus, my keen interest in Benedictinism,  monasticism more generally, and mysticism led to my 2018 book In the Bosom of the Father: The Collected Poems of a Benedictine Mystic, my translation of the collected poems of the Benedictine monk, Swami Abhishiktananda (aka Dom Henri Le Saux), commissioned by The Abhishiktananda Centre for Interreligious Dialogue. The book is now available from Resource Publications (an imprint of Wipf and Stock) and Amazon. Swami Atmananda Udasin of Ajatananda Ashram in Rishikesh, India and Fr. Cyprian Consiglio of New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California were both kind enough to contribute (an afterword and foreword respectively) to the book as well.

I primarily translate Old English and Middle English texts, and my latest book project is a verse translation of the Old English Advent Lyrics. O Shining Light: Old English Meditations for Advent and Christmastide makes available a stand-alone edition and translation of the tenth-century poem, an introduction and commentary written with my wife Mamie, and visual art by Daniel Mitsui and the Gracewing team.

My first book project, published in December 2017 from Cistercian Publications, was a translation of St. Æthelwold of Winchester’s Old English version of the Latin Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule of St. Benedict was an essential text in the lives of many of the learned in late Anglo-Saxon England, and much of the material we still possess from Anglo-Saxon England was produced in monasteries St. Æthelwold helped found during the tenth-century Benedictine Reform or at least in the Reform’s cultural milieu. As such, I hope it is a text that teachers will adopt for providing cultural, social, intellectual, and religious context for Old English poetry and late Anglo-Saxon prose.

My translations of Middle English poems appear semi-regularly in the Benedictine magazine, Spirit & Life.

My first chapbook, Lofsangas: Poems Old and New, was published by Franciscan UP (2015) and consists primarily of verse translations of Old English poems. Copies of the book are available on Amazon.

Books

O Shining Light: Old English Meditations for Advent and Christmastide. Leominster, Hereford: Gracewing, 2020.

In the Bosom of the Father: The Collected Poems of a Benedictine Mystic. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2018.

The Old English Rule of St. Benedict with Related Old English Texts. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2017.

Chapbook

Lofsangas: Poems Old and New. Franciscan University Press, 2015.

Poems

“Three Old English Galdru.” (“Against a Sudden Stitch,” “Against a Dwarf,” “The Nine Herbs Charm”). Dappled Things, Mary Queen of Angels (2021).

“Weland the Smith.” Macrina Magazine 8 (August 2021).

“An Early Poem on Saint Benedict.” Spirit & Life 117:2 (Jul Aug 2021).

“Against the Water-Elf-Disease.” Ancient Exchanges (Spring 2021).

“Helgi Hundingbane’s Kviða.” Exchanges (Fall 2020).

“A Journey Galdor.” Trinity House Review (2020).

“The Ruin.” Presence 4 (2020).

“Adam Laid in Bondage.” Spirit & Life 114.5 (2019).

“The Blessed Sacrament” and “A Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.” Spirit & Life 113.2 (2017).

“Truth: A Ballade of Good Counsel.” St. Katherine’s Review 5.1 (2017).

“I Ought to Weep.” Spirit & Life 111.6 (2016).

“Translations from the Proverbs of Chaucer.” Main Street Rag 21.1 (2016).

“Grieving for Mary.” Spirit & Life.111.5 (2016).

“In Praise of Wine: from the Middle English of John Lydgate, OSB.” Illya’s Honey     (Winter 2015).

“A Hymn to the Cross” and “The Wells of Christ’s Wounds.” Spirit & Life 110.6 (2015).

“Nobility: A Moral Ballade by Geoffrey Chaucer.” The Rotary Dial 21 (2014).

“The Child Jesus to Mary, the Rose: A Ballade by John Lydgate, OSB.” Spirit & Life 110.4 (2014).

“Almsgiving: A translation from the tenth century Exeter Book.” Dappled Things 9.3 (2014).