from ‘Door’

In The Other Mountain Rowan Williams relives moments of intense trial, when women and men are transformed in spirit, and sometimes in body also. He not only reads the signs as they appear in nature and history: he lives them through language. Imagination and language bring us close to our condition. They can witness and relive in all humility the circumstances of others, or witness nature and its revelations. His poems are informed by a sensibility shaped by Wales and by the Welsh language. They prove the reality of ‘the bright, inner freedom’ we can exercise through grace, even in a world whose stark gravity is all about us. Williams avoids the merely personal: the world exists and his imagination and faith work together to explore and celebrate what is and what might be.