St. Columba's Inverness Poetry and Spirituality Series
Love Poems to God
Rainer Maria Rilke's Poetry in Translation
A tribute to the legacy of Joanna Macy, co-translator of Rilke's poetry
An Online Mini-workshop
with Michael J. Jones,
poet and teacher
Moderated by Penny Washbourn,
Series Coordinator
November 8
10 am - 12 pm PT / 1-3 pm ET
Cost: $30
Joanna Macy’s favorite Rilke poem
“ I live my life in widening circles
That reach across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
-Rilke’s Book of Hours I,2 Translated by Anita Burrows and Joanna Macy
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Michael J. Jones, poet and teacher.
Michael has taught in public schools since 1990. He facilitates a weekly poetry workshop, now in its fifth year, for family and friends. His poetry appears in literary magazines such as Beloit Poetry Journal, and in a chapbook, Moved (Kattywompus Press). He has a degree in English from Stanford University.
Joanna Macy Ph.D. author & teacher (1939-07/19/2025), known for The Work That Reconnects, was a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interwove her scholarship with learnings from six decades of activism. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her thirteen books, which include four works of Rainer Maria Rilke with translation and commentary.
Anita Barrows was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947 and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1966. Among her awards in poetry have been grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Centrum Foundation, and the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and publications by The Quarterly Review of Literature and the Riverstone Press. A respected poet, her latest works include Testimony (2021), and a novel The language of Birds (2022) She has also done translations since 1972 of novels, poetry, plays, and non-fiction from French and Italian.
Barrows holds a PhD in psychology and is Institute Professor of Psychology at the Wright Institute, Berkeley. She maintains a private clinical practice in Berkeley and is a mother and grandmother and companion to a household of dogs, cats, and birds.