Merlin's Isle: An Arthuriad by Malcolm Guite to be Published by Rabbit Room Press

A 4-volume epic poem from Malcolm Guite

As the Rabbit Room poetry Substack turns one year old this week, it is a time to look back and look forward.

This year, we published over 100 poems from new poets and beloved, classic voices. We launched an ongoing series on how to write poetry. Ben Palpant has been traveling hither and yon all year to interview important contemporary poets of faith. Mischa Willett walked us through his new poetry for the past eight weeks during the Stack Takeover. And, perhaps best of all, we have used your paid subscriptions to commission 30 new poems from excellent poets this year.

In year two, we are going to kick it up a notch. Today, that comes in the form of a long-awaited announcement. We are proud to announce that Rabbit Room Press is publishing Malcolm Guite's four-volume epic poem, Merlin's Isle: An Arthuriad.

[Note: We posted the poem below already but caught a couple of formatting errors. This is the corrected version.]

And so the tale came down the years
In every land and tongue.
And old folk told it through their tears
And gave it to the young.

And even I, in these dark days,
Have heard and found it true.
So I have taken up the tale
And passed it on to you.

-Galahad and the Grail

Rabbit Room Press has long made camp at the crossroads of the fantastic and the literary. We are, we like to claim, descended from the literary traditions of MacDonald and Grahame, of Lewis and Tolkien, of Wangerin and L’Engle. And they are, in turn, descended from a litany of writers and poets down through the centuries.

It seems right, then, that in the 21st century Rabbit Room Press has arrived upon the literary and literal doorstop of Malcolm Guite. In fact, we’ve been admirers and champions of Guite’s work for years. His fluency with the poetic traditions and stories of the past, along with his theological bent for illuminating the deep mysteries of faith, and his rare gift of making poetry approachable for the modern reader, have all endeared him to us as a kindred spirit and a fellow traveler. 

In 2022, Rabbit Room Press was thrilled to include an original ballad of Guite’s writing in our story collection entitled The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad, but little did we know that the inclusion of that ballad would be as the first pebbles of an avalanche.

Malcolm Guite, you see, has been in a life-long love affair with the stories of King Arthur and his knights, and on the heels of his Galahadic ballad, that romance with the “matter of Britain” has grown into a full-fledged epic poem in the tradition of Homer, Virgil, Milton, Tennyson. Guite’s work now encompasses a four-volume epic in verse called Merlin’s Isle: An Arthuriad. And despite its daunting scope, its four volumes retain all of Guite’s seemingly effortless approachability and readability, his exuberant affinity for the tales of Arthur and Britain, and his penchant for capturing the numinous and calling the reader deeper into it. Indeed, here is an epic poem, not constrained to the shelves of academia, but bound as well for the young reader enraptured by tales of chivalric deed, or the light reader in search of the lyrical, or even the family reading aloud at day’s end.

Guite embarks upon the millenia-spanning tradition of the Epic with the joy of a child at play and the sure precision of a master with a twinkle in his eye.

It’s with great joy that Rabbit Room Press enters on this 4-part quest of the Grail, of Camelot and Avalon and all things Arthurian, with Malcolm Guite leading us into the storied wilds, and with acclaimed illustrator Stephen Crotts adorning Guite’s words with images all along the way.

The first volume of Merlin’s Isle, titled Galahad and the Grail, will be released in spring of 2026, followed by volumes 2-4 in 2027 and 2028.

We invite you to take up the tale. 

Join us.

It’s going to be epic.

---

From Merlin’s Isle: An Arthuriad:

As I walked out one morning
All in the soft fine rain
It seemed as though a silver veil
Was shining over hill and vale
As though some lovely long-lost spell
Had made all new again.

And through that shimmer in the air
I seemed to hear a sound
As though a distant horn were blown
In some lost land that I had known
That seemed to speak from tree and stone
And echo all around.

And with the music came these words:
“Poet, take up the tale!
Take up the tale this land still keeps
In earth and water magic sleeps
The dryad sighs, the naiad weeps
But you can lift the veil.

From where the waves wash Cornwall’s caves
Out to the white horse vale
The lands still hold the tale of old
Like hidden treasure, buried gold
Once more the story must be told
Poet, take up the tale.

Tell of the king who will return
Tell of the Holy Grail
Tell of old knights and chivalry
Tell of the pristine mystery
Of Merlin’s Isle of gramarye
Poet, take up the tale.

Take up the tale of courtesy
Take up the tale of grace
Revive the lands’ long memory
Summon the fair folk, let them be, 
Something of faery, wild and free
Still lingers in this place.

Lift up your eyes to see the light
On Glastonbury Tor
Then come down from that far green hill
To where the sacred waters spill
And shine within the chalice well
And listen to their lore.

Yea, listen well before you start,
Be still ere you begin
See through the surface round about
The noise, the rush, the fear, the doubt
Though Modern Britain lies without
Fair Logres lives within.

You may yet walk through Merlin’s isle
By oak and ash and thorn
The ancient hills do not forget
And you might wake their wisdom yet
Who knows what wonders might be met
On this midsummer morn.”

So I have taken up the tale
To tell it full and free
The tale that makes my heart rejoice
I tell it, for I have no choice
I tell it till another voice
Takes up the tale from me.

“Prelude: Take up the Tale” 
from Merlin’s Isle: An Arthuriad
by Malcolm Guite Copyright 2024