The twentieth-century Welsh poet R.S. Thomas has been called a poet of Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday falls between the day of Christ’s crucifixion and the morning of His resurrection. Commemorative of Christ’s descent to the realm of the dead, Holy Saturday, and the poetry of R.S. Thomas, also speak evocatively to times when we feel caught somewhere between devastation and hope, between periods of spiritual suffering and the experience of God’s blessing. With Easter approaching, we spoke with Richard McLauchlan—an independent scholar, professional biographer, and author of Saturday’s Silence: R.S. Thomas and Paschal Reading—about the day between crucifixion and resurrection, a day of suffering and silence that speaks to the spiritual realities so many of us feel.
Interview by Matthew Wickman, Founding Director, BYU Humanities Center.
Produced and edited by Brooke Browne and Sam Jacob
Micah Mattix is poetry editor at First Things and professor of English at Regent University in Virginia. He has published a book of essays...
Stephanie Paulsell is Susan Shallcross Swarz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Faculty Dean of Eliot House at...
Joshua Hren is founder of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. His...
