August 2025 | LISLE, IL — Malcolm Guite, poet, priest, and professor, has signed contracts with IVP Academic for the first three volumes in a new series tentatively titled Classic Poetry with Malcolm Guite. The first volume, tentatively titled How to Read Poetry, is projected to release in Fall 2028.
“I had the pleasure of taking a summer class on poetry with the inimitable Malcolm Guite during my time at Regent College, and it was one of the most impactful courses of my degree,” said acquiring editor Zachary Gordon. “All I wanted to do afterward was pull up an armchair and hear Professor Guite explain the classics again and again, and this series will capture some of that essence. Getting the opportunity to develop the idea of this series with Professor Guite and see some of the course material turned into book form is deeply gratifying.”
The second title in the series, tentatively titled George Herbert and John Donne, is projected to release in Fall 2029. The third untitled volume is tentatively scheduled for Fall 2030.
Guite (PhD, University of Durham) is the chaplain at Girton College, University of Cambridge, where he also teaches in the Faculty of Divinity. As a priest, poet, and songwriter, he travels and speaks regularly throughout the United Kingdom and North America. He is the author of Mariner: A Theological Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder, 2017; IVP Academic, 2018).
“Anyone who has ever met Malcolm Guite or heard him speak knows it’s unforgettable: the energy of his engagement with poetry is exceeded only by his deeply learned mastery of literary works across a span of centuries, all mixed with an undercurrent of mischievous humor that keeps you wondering what he’ll say next,” said Jon Boyd, associate publisher and academic editorial director at InterVarsity Press (IVP). “In this series, we get two treasures at once: not only volumes loaded with the gems of English poetry from throughout the last millennium, but also in Guite the benevolent superintending intelligence of one of the tradition’s great advocates and practitioners.”
How to Read Poetry will introduce the reader to poetry through a close reading of seven classic poems. These poems will chronologically take the reader through the English poetic tradition. Subsequent volumes in Classic Poetry with Malcolm Guite will cover topics like early English poetry, sonnets, and Romanticism. Each volume will have a comprehensive introduction, a study guide with questions for group discussion, and light annotations.
Guite said, “I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with IVP Academic to bring out fresh and accessible editions of works of classic poetry. These works are not only beautiful in themselves and full of insight and wisdom, but they also form an essential part of the heritage of the English-speaking world. They need to be read afresh in every generation, for they still have much to teach us. In late years literary criticism has been lost in a fog of theory, but my aim in these editions, following the example of C. S. Lewis’s great preface to Paradise Lost, is to give readers enough background information and critical insight to open the text and enable a fuller, deeper reading, but not to overwhelm them with the technical or theoretical detail that tends to clog purely academic editions.”
Contact: Karin DeHaven, kdehaven@ivpress.com
