Malcolm Guite is a poet, priest, and former chaplain and Life Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. He teaches and lectures widely on theology and literature and is the author of numerous books. Both he and Luci Shaw had meaningful connections to Regent College. In this reflection, Guite remembers Shaw, a poet whose Christian faith shone unmistakably through her work.

Luci Shaw was a prolific and highly regarded poet, publishing eighteen collections of poetry and co-authoring or editing nineteen volumes of non-fiction. She lectured widely on art and spirituality, the Christian imagination, poetry writing, and journal writing as a tool for artistic and spiritual growth. She was not only well known but also deeply beloved by the Regent College community.

Guite notes that Shaw was an unashamedly Christian poet, gifted in “telling it slant”—embodying her faith through vivid, unexpected imagery. Much of her poetry arose from a keen attentiveness to the natural world, especially the greening glory of her own garden, where belief took on texture, color, and form.