Huleatt’s voice is captivating as she traces the history of a compassionate life lived. This moving collection on the life of a true poet is stellar. The final poem in the collection brought me to tears.

The genesis of The Heart's Necessities, so well written by Becca Stevens, is a complex and interesting one. The journeys of being led from one discovery to another are very profound. Jane Tyson Clement was a wonderful poet and person … I was so interested in her and her husband’s commitment to the Bruderhof and their life in faith.

A gem of a book… Poetry by an obscure dead poet, but with a twist: this poet, Jane Tyson Clement, has a huge fan in jazz/indie rock musician and singer Becca Stevens, and Plough Publishing has put the two of them together. It’s an exciting book on many levels, especially when you hear the poetry put to music.

Through hard-won religious commitment, Jane Tyson Clement’s poems rose from feminine eloquence, in the manner of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to something closer to universal:

‘Too late we break the siege
of the close-bastioned heart
and find the city starved,
dry to the bone, and dark.’

This beautiful homage to Jane Tyson Clement and her poetry, which will continue to resonate with readers and, through Becca Stevens’s compositions, music lovers, also celebrates the kind of artistic collaboration that spans time and opens us to our own ‘heart’s necessities.’

The poetry is brilliant, and it’s inspired Becca to write stunning music.