Q&A with Scott Hales, author of Sacred Scar March 24 2026

Greg Kofford Books recently asked Scott Hales about his new collection, Sacred Scar: Poems.

The Title's Significance

Q. You describe the memory of St. Francis of Assisi as a "sacred scar of memory, slow to mend." Why did you choose Sacred Scar as the title for this collection, and how does it encapsulate the relationship between faith and suffering explored in these poems? 

A. In the poem “Stigmata,” I use the phrase “sacred scar of memory” to refer to the way my older kids remember waving every Sunday to a statue of St. Francis of Assisi on our way to our Latter-day Saint ward building in Fairfield, Ohio. But the phrase also alludes back to the poem’s title and its reference to the wounds of Christ and St. Francis. If you think about it, all memories are like scars in that they are traces of the past that we carry with us. Some of these memories are more sacred than others because of the meaning we give them. For my kids (and me), the memory of waving to St. Francis each Sunday is bittersweet because it recalls a time of childhood and innocence that is now lost. But it’s also a sacred memory because it’s something we share. 

Of course, some scars (and memories) hurt worse than others, and many of the poems in this collection explore the scars that come with choosing faith. For me, St. Francis and his wounds embody this struggle. The call to follow Christ is supposed to stretch and change us. Often that involves wrestling with the past or coming to terms with aging, death, physical and mental illness, and other harsh realities of our mortal experience. 

Catholic and Mormon Intersection

Q. In your notes, you mention a long-standing interest in the lives of Catholic saints, which inspired the first section of the book. As a Mormon poet, what do you find most compelling about these figures, and how did you navigate the parallels between their "mad devotion" and your own faith experiences? 

A. When I was a kid, I lived behind a Catholic church and elementary school. The first non-Mormon church service that I remember attending was a Catholic baptism. I was always fascinated by Catholic art and iconography, which was far more expressive and visceral–and, therefore, more interesting–than the art I saw at my own church building. And I think my fascination with Catholic art led me to a casual interest in the lives of the saints. 

In Sacred Scar, I have poems that draw parallels between the lives of these saints and my own life. Many of the Saints I write about lived bizarre, miraculous lives. I think I wanted to see what happened when I juxtaposed that aspect of their stories with the more mundane details of my life. The results are sometimes funny, but they are also surprisingly profound. I think they capture some of the holiness of everyday life.

The "Forgotten Valley"

Q. Section three is dedicated to poems about Utah’s Cedar Valley. Why was it important for you to give this "forgotten valley" its own poetic voice, and how does its specific landscape shape your spiritual perspective? 

A. In Latter-day Saint history, Cedar Valley hardly gets a mention. After Johnston’s Army came to Utah in the late 1850s, they established Camp Floyd and set up a headquarters in the valley. The closest Mormon settlement was Cedar Fort, which was nothing to write home about. My fourth-great-grandmother, Lucy Bailey White, is buried in an unmarked grave there. 

I moved to Cedar Valley when I came to Utah in 2015, not because I had family ties there–I didn’t know about them at the time–but because housing prices were cheap. And I was immediately struck by how little I knew about that part of Utah. What was its history? 

As I began to study the history of Cedar Valley, I was drawn to the story of Cedar Fort and the hard, forgotten lives of its early settlers. But I was also fascinated by the valley’s earlier history. Just north of my house is a cluster of rocks with barely visible petroglyphs from the Fremont culture. When my family first moved to the area, these rocks were in the middle of nowhere. Now a housing development is going up around them. In fact, houses are going up everywhere in the valley, even around Cedar Fort, which has always felt very isolated. In ten years, the natural beauty and sacred character of the valley, which has existed since time immemorial, will be wholly transformed by the sprawl. I’m complicit in this transformation, which is evident in some of the poems in the third section. My Cedar Valley poems are an effort to preserve some of the forgotten history–and my own history in the valley.

Ancestral Connections

Q. You include several poems about your direct ancestors, Lucy Bailey White and Samuel D. White. How does discovering their history—particularly Lucy’s unmarked grave in Cedar Fort—influence your fear of being forgotten and your drive to create through poetry?

A. It’s sad to consider, but most people who have lived on the earth have now been forgotten. Walk through any old cemetery, and you’ll see unreadable headstones that have crumbled or faded away. We remember our parents, grandparents, and often our great-grandparents, but beyond that generation, we have no living memory of who came before us. Because Latter-day Saints believe in redeeming the dead, we typically have a better knowledge of who our ancestors were than most people, but even then, we don’t know much about them beyond their names and birth and death dates. We don’t really know anything about them–their likes, dislikes, hopes, and dreams–that matter, not unless they were incredible record keepers. And most people have not been incredible record keepers.  

As I note at the end of Sacred Scar, my “greatest fear” is being forgotten. And yet, I recognize that it will eventually happen. It is not a fear that keeps me awake at night, but it is a fear that compels me to write poetry and keep a daily record of my life. As far as I know, my ancestors Lucy Bailey White and her son Samuel Dennis White did not keep records of their lives. Lucy’s existence, in fact, is barely acknowledged on a historical marker at her unmarked grave in Cedar Fort. I wish I knew more about both of these ancestors, and the poems about them in Sacred Scar are efforts to recover something of their memory. 

Humor and Heartache

Q. Your writing group encouraged you to include "funny poems," such as your encounter with St. Patrick eating Lucky Charms or the "thrift-store Wranglers" of your college days. How do you balance this wit with the heavier themes of mortality and the "ugly place to die" depicted in the ER? 

A. While creating my webcomic/graphic novel The Garden of Enid, I became interested in the intersections between humor and tragedy, and I realized that humor is often tinged with sadness, especially in those moments when we have to laugh to keep ourselves from crying. In fact, I realized that the kinds of experiences that provoke laughter–the ironic, the unexpected, the absurd, the incongruous, etc.–can also provoke anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions, depending on the circumstances. 

I don’t know that I ever seek to balance humor with heavier emotions. I’m more interested in seeing how they play off of each other. In the grand scheme of mortality, after all, the heavier moments of life will always outweigh the lighter moments, especially near the end, so there’s never any hope for balance. Humor, at least, allows us to experience joy even while the struggle is real. The best kinds of funerals are those where laughter is abundant. 

The Weight of History

Q. In "For Samuel D. White, Pioneer," you grapple with the "cruelty" of big dreams and the fact that pioneers settled on land that wasn't "God’s to give". How do you reconcile your admiration for these "Sunday school heroes" with the "tooth and claw" realities of their legacy? 

A. I love the Mormon pioneers. They left us an inexhaustible legacy. And for me, it’s often a deeply inspiring legacy. I did not grow up in Utah, but one thing I like about living here is seeing and sensing how deeply the pioneers’ history is imprinted on the land. As a historian of Latter-day Saint history, I cannot drive anywhere in this state without seeing that imprint and reflecting on it. 

But I also recognize that the Mormon pioneers did not settle on unoccupied land. There is a deeper history to the Great Basin, and its imprint is also on the land. The petroglyphs near my home, for instance, are a reminder that people have been living and dying here long, long before it was ever “Mormon Country.” And the story of how it became “Mormon Country” is not without serious episodes of cruelty and violence, which is something we must grapple with if we ever hope to become the people of peace that God expects us to be. 

In Sacred Scar, I don’t think I offer any great direction for navigating thorny questions about the past or the legacy of the pioneers. I hope the poems invite readers to reflect on the legacy and what it cost. I hope they create space for dialogue, conviction, and action. 

Advice to Future Poets

Q. Your poem "Advice to a Young Mormon Poet" suggests that "nothing you say will be entirely new." In a faith tradition with a long history of "scribbled" poems, how do you personally find a way to "React" and "Restore" without simply echoing the past? 

A. I think a lot of my poetry is about a yearning to recover the past, which is one of the impulses behind history. Of course, I recognize that nothing I write will ever come close to bringing back the past, but so far, that hasn’t stopped me from trying. At the very least, I hope my poetry sparks interest in recovering traces of the people and ideas we’ve lost to time and forgetting. 

Ultimately, “Advice to a Young Mormon Poet” is a plea for Mormon poets to step outside of the twenty-first century and take in a broader view of our literary tradition. We have so much to build and riff on. I’d love to see contemporary Mormon letters dialogue more with its predecessors. 

The Role of the Mundane

Q. From killing a mouse in a bathroom closet to a routine dentist appointment, you find spiritual resonance in very ordinary moments. Do you view the act of writing poetry as a way of "divining" the sacred within the suburban? 

A. Maybe. A lot of writing poetry is simply about finding moments to write about. I live a very suburban life, so that’s something I write about when I’m grasping for inspiration. There’s a poem in Sacred Scar called “Holy Envy,” which is about seeking the spiritual in the suburban and coming up short. As a poet, I sometimes want a rather pedestrian moment to be bigger than it is for the sake of the poem. But you can’t force spiritual resonance if it’s not there. The result is always shallow and unconvincing. Sometimes you just have to let a dust cloud be a dust cloud. 

Of course, the ordinary can take on greater significance, as when a mouse in the house becomes a symbol for the universal need for warmth and comfort. So, at times, poetry really is about “divining” significance in the seemingly insignificant. But I think there are also times when poetry should resist significance. Maybe the poetry in a routine dentist appointment is its routineness. 

Sacred Scar: Poems was published in paperback and as an ebook on February 17, 2026.