Houston, Texas – February 9, 2026 – Press Release:
Saint Julian Press is proud to announce a new book of poetry, The Vessels We Carry Keep Us Alive, by author Virginia Barrett, to be published on March 31, 2026. The Vessels We Carry Keep Us Alive is a contemplative poetry collection tracing landscapes of desert, coast, and spirit. These poems explore faith, grief, and attention, in which presence becomes prayer, and the ordinary opens toward the eternal.
The Vessels We Carry Keep Us Alive is a journey through landscapes both physical and spiritual, a meditation on what endures in us and through us. These poems move across deserts and mountains, from the Taos Valley to the Pacific Coast, where the poet's voice becomes a companion to wind, water, and light. In language that is both intimate and expansive, the collection gathers memory, longing, and faith into a single gesture—an offering of presence and praise.
This is a book of thresholds: between the seen and unseen, between what is passing and what endures. Each poem captures a moment of revelation, born from silence or song—the crow’s flight, the bending of grass, the hum of bees at Olema, or the bell of a chapel at Chimayó. The reader enters a world where sacred geography is mapped by breath, and where grief is not an ending but an opening toward love’s broader horizon.
There is a reflective patience here that evokes the desert fathers, the mysticism of Julian of Norwich, and the clarity of the American West. Through echoes of Rilke, Ferlinghetti, and H.D., these poems engage in a dialogue with the great witnesses of light and loss—each line a vessel, fragile yet enduring, carrying the essence of the word toward new creation. Reading The Vessels We Carry Keep Us Alive is like entering a living prayer—a gentle unfolding of spirit that attentively listens to the world’s expressive silence. It is a reflection on what it means to reside in mystery, to honor the impermanent, and to discover in attention the rhythm of the eternal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Virginia Barrett is a poet, writer, artist, editor, and educator. She earned her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco, where she studied with Shelley Memorial Award recipient D. A. Powell. An earnest spiritual seeker, she is a student of Vedanta-Yoga philosophy and practice, American Transcendentalism, and an ardent lover of mystic poetry from diverse cultures, all of which inform her writing. The Vessels We Carry Keep Us Alive is her seventh book of poems. www.virginiabarrett.com
Publication Date: March 31, 2026
Paperback: $18.00
Publisher: Saint Julian Press, Inc.
Language: English
Paperback: 116 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-955194-51-8
