The Novels and Poetry
Of Elizabeth Cunningham

Elizabeth Cunningham, managing director of The Center at High Valley, is also an award-winning novelist and poet. Her two most recent novels The Passion of Mary Magdalen and Magdalen Rising are available (signed and at a discount!) at all High Valley events.

For more about The Maeve Chronicles, see the description and excerpts below. Visit Elizabeth’s website: Elizabeth Cunningham To be on Elizabeth’s Reader’s List, email her by filling out the contact form. Also available at High Valley is Elizabeth's latest collection of poetry, Wild Mercy; Tarot-Inspired Poems. See below two poems by Elizabeth Cunningham honoring Olga, High Valley’s Empress.

Elizabeth Cunningham has won back the rights to her earlier titles: The Return of the Goddess; The Wild Mother; How to Spin Gold and Small Bird. The novels will eventually be reissued by Monkfish Book Publishing Company. Meanwhile all the titles, except for How to Spin Gold which has completely sold out, are available at High Valley events.

Elizabeth's The Maeve Chronicles are a series of novels recounting the life adventures of an unconventional, unrepentant Mary Magdalen—a redheaded Celt named Maeve who is no one’s disciple! Each novel is designed to stand alone, and the series can be read in any sequence.

Magdalen Rising, The Beginning by Elizabeth Cunningham (Monkfish Publishing, 2007) set at a druid college, tells the tale of Maeve’s youthful passion for a student from Galilee known to the Celts as Esus. The lovers are forced to part when Maeve defies the authority of the druids to save Jesus’s life.

The Passion of Mary Magdalen by Elizabeth Cunningham (Monkfish, 2006) follows Maeve’s perilous search for Jesus through slavery and prostitution in Rome to founding her own holy whorehouse in Magdala. The ultimate reunion of Maeve and Jesus is as stormy as it is ecstatic, infusing this passion narrative with their passion for each other. In the end, they dare together the greatest mystery of all.

Bright Dark Madonna, the third in Elizabeth's series, is forthcoming from Monkfish Publishing in Spring, 2009. Black-Robed Priestess, the fourth and concluding chronicle, is in progress.

The following are excerpts from The Maeve Chronicles, the first two adapted as poetry:

IT’S NOT ALL PRETTY

from Elizabeth Cunningham's Magdalen Rising

It’s not all pretty.
The earth knows terrible things.
She receives all deaths,
gentle and brutal.

She bears the pain of every birth.
She turns all things back into herself;
she worries the bones to dust.

She is changing, always changing.
Layers shift.
Her own bones crash and break.

Tides heave.
Rock erupts into fire.
It’s not all pretty.

Beauty never is.

WEDDING WINE

from Elizabeth Cunningham's The Passion of Mary Magdalen

I don’t know exactly what was in the wine.
It tasted fiery and sweet.
I suspect it was red mead: Maeve Rhuad
Mead mixed with red wine.
An intimate joke, a pun made by the Bridegroom
that only the Bride would understand.
Its effect transcended any ingredient.
It was like drinking life itself:
new-turned earth, sun, wind scented with sea,
blossoms opening at first light, the ripe perfection of fruit—
the elements gathered on our tongues, lingering on our breath.
It was like drinking love itself,
the passion of the Bride and Bridegroom distilled,
shared among the guests,
flowing in all our veins, rivers from a single rise.
If we were drunk, we were divinely drunk.
We were in love. In Love. All of us.
None of us could bear to part that night.
The stars were so beautiful. We were so beautiful.
In the end, we all slept together,
no one alone, each one beloved.

HYMN TO MA OF EPHESUS

from Elizabeth Cunningham's forthcoming Bright Dark Madonna

I sing to the mother of all
she whose heart is honeycomb
who follows the spiral flight of bees

I sing to the mother long bereft
to the one who is leaving me
for the far high reaches of light and air.

O mother of earth, crowned with creation
think kindly on your daughter
toiling here, heavy with sorrow and fruit.

O wild, sweet, terrible mother
ancient and young, tended and tender
dry and translucent to my touch

when you are gone, will you be my road?
when you are gone, will you show me the stars?
when you are gone, will I find your face in my own?

I sing to the mother who is more than mine
to the girl grown ancient gathering eggs to her breast
to the abandoned mother who has never left.

Two poems from Elizabeth Cunningham's Wild Mercy, inspired by Olga

EMPRESS CARD

The Queen of Life likes to wear
leopard print sarongs
garments easy to slip on and off.

That mirror you see is the moon
fallen at her feet.

She never looks at herself from the outside.
She loves her body more than that.

Does the sun feel good on her flank?
Does the rock she leans against
fit the curve of her back?
Her beauty is made of ease.

Wherever she walks
there’s a smell of beach roses
and salt—sometimes a whiff
of seaweed at low tide.
It wasn’t that long ago
she was a mermaid.

If you lay your head
between her breasts
you can hear the ocean.

AS SHE IS

I cannot find my husband’s trowel to take to plant flowers
on my mother’s grave, but I know
my mother-in-law the gardener will have one.
I stop by and find her trowel on an old picnic bench
beside her clippers and gardening gloves
but I can’t find her inside resting
or out in the flower beds.
I think of leaving a note in the kitchen
then decide to walk once more around the house.
At last I see her standing near the lake
looking at the crabapple tree, blossom-heavy
and intensely pink beside the brown barn.
She stands still, and I see her as she is
alone.
The wind is bending the grass toward her,
seeds and blossoms borne on it
the water stirred in tiny waves
the sky blue but soft with moisture.

She does not see or hear me till I call hello.
“I was just thinking,” she says, “how much
Julian would have enjoyed this tree.
He planted it, you know.”
Then she turns toward the peach tree
that has given such a profusion of peaches
in all the years I’ve known her.
“I think it’s dead,” she says.
I look, and it’s so bare and grey
surrounded by all the pink and green and blue.
“It is the last of the fruit trees Julian planted.
Well,” she shrugs, “they don’t last that long.”

We talk of other things.
She lets me take the trowel
I promise to bring her a new plant.
I am thinking I will never forget
seeing her standing alone
in the spring wind
between the blossoming crabapple
and the dead peach
remembering her lover
who planted fruit trees.

All poems by Elizabeth Cunningham.