Pearl is a long medieval dream-vision poem written in Middle English toward the end of the 14th century. There is a single manuscript of the poem housed in the British Library. Among other themes the poem explores grief and faith in the context of a father (the speaker of the poem) mourning the death of his young daughter (“Pearl”). No one knows who the “Pearl Poet” is, but they have three other poems which are attributed to them: Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Bevin O’Connor is a poet and educator from Southern California and received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Sugar House Review’s Sugar Suites, Southern Indiana Review, Third Coast, Bear Review, Annulet, Palette Poetry, Afternoon Visitor, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is pursuing a PhD in Poetry at the University of Houston, where she is an Inprint Nina and Michael Zilkha Fellowship recipient. She facilitates a number of community creative writing workshops including poetry classes at the Harris County Women’s Empowerment Center.