Poetry in the Crypt: Lyn McCredden

Lyn McCredden is a poet and former academic living in Central Victoria, Dja Dja Warrung country, on a rocky, treed property populated by kangaroos, echidnas, yellow-tail black cockatoos and eagles – with a bolthole also in Fitzroy. Poetry, theology, family, parish life, Australian literature, travel, and her dog, Penny, are Lyn's key passions.

At twelve years old Lyn asked her mother if anyone had written about the reasons, hoping to be the first. Despite her mother’s panicked look, Lyn has been writing poetry ever since, first in the interstices of academic life, and then with more discipline in retirement. Her first volume, Wanting Only, was published in 2017. Published this year, her second volume, Released, comes from an intense, cathartic experience following the premature death of her son, Nick, aged 40. 

'McCredden's work shows us why poetry matters,' writes fellow poet and academic Lachlan Brown. 'Released offers plenitude in the face of unbearable loss, infinite care... piercing diagnoses in an age of apathy and the repainting of the world in complex gleaming hues. These poems utterly undo us, yet they also act to bind our deepest wounds.'

This Poetry in the Crypt reading will be interspersed with reflections on the overarching theological questions which continue to motivate Lyn's writing: God’s role in suffering; the nature of mercy (divine and human), and the mysteries of death and the afterlife. Refreshments provided.