There are perhaps few worse times to take on a major translation project than in the months before the arrival of a baby. It’s a testament to my feeling for the poetry of John of the Cross that I took the plunge, despite that looming deadline.

In the end, I spent almost three years immersed in the writings of the ­sixteenth-century Spanish mystic – redrafting his 16 extant poems, and his larger corpus of maxims and commentary, through the late stages of pregnancy, the birth of my son, his early weeks and months: I neared the finish line just as Rowan began to talk.

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