Dionysius the Areopagite, with other poems

In 1842, Manchester was becoming the industrial engine of England, yet its literary voice was still finding its shape. Ann Hawkshaw emerged from this moment of transformation, and her debut collection announces a poet of considerable ambition. The centerpiece, "Dionysius the Areopagite," adapts the biblical narrative of the Athenian convert who fell under Paul's preaching, and imagines what that radical shift cost him. Dionysius leaves behind Myra, his betrothed, and her sister Corrina, their lives fractured by his new faith. The poem doesn't merely recount a conversion; it examines what remains when a man chooses God over the woman he loves. The heart of this collection pulses with that impossible tension. The volume also contains Hawkshaw's significant works "The Past" and "The Future," meditations on time and transcendence, alongside shorter pieces that traverse history, grief, and devotion. She writes with Victorian restraint about belief and abandonment, her lines clean and her feeling precise. For readers seeking recovered Victorian voices, or those drawn to the intimate costs of faith, this collection offers something rare: a woman's poetic reckoning with what it means to lose everything for the divine.