Come to the Launch of Waiting on the Word

I am happy to announce that my new book Waiting On The Word is published by Canterbury Press this coming Monday. It is a companion volume to ‘The Word in the Wilderness’, my anthology of poetry for Lent, Holy Week and Easter, so if you enjoyed that I hope you will enjoy this. Waiting on the Word gives you a poem, and an opening out and reflection on that poem for every day from Advent Sunday, through to Christmas and beyond to the feast of Epiphany and the coming of the Wise Men.

Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter, but sadly Advent has been swallowed up in the rush, the busyness and pressure to consume that dominate the Christmas Season. This book offers you the chance to step back and set a little time, about five minutes, each day to awaken your soul and kindle your imagination to prepare for and contemplate the great and joyful mystery which Christmas celebrates. I have chosen great poems from the past, by poets like Christina Rosetti, George Herbert, and Edmund Spenser, but I have also included some wonderful poems by distinguished contemporary poets like Scott Cairns and Luci Shaw. I have also included some of my own poems, some which may be familiar, like my sonnets on the Advent Antiphons, and some which are entirely new and have not been published before. After each poem I have written a brief reflection to help readers appreciate the depths of the poem itself and also to offer some thoughts and meditations on what it means to read that poem in our own day and age. I hope you enjoy it.

To launch the book into the world there will be a free event at Otley Hall, the beautiful, but easily accessible Elizabethan moated grange in Suffolk, and I would be glad if any readers of this blog could join me there for wine and cheese, some readings from the book and from my other poems, and a chance to meet and chat, and, if you wish, to buy a signed copy at a discount. Full details are below. For those who cannot make this event I have also listed below the other events between now and Advent at which you will be able to hear me read and buy a copy of the book. The book will of course also be available, from the end of this month, from the Publisher, Canterbury, from Amazon, and to order from your local Bookshop. I will be posting some little extracts from the book on this blog over the course of September and October.

You are invited to the Launch of

Waiting on the Word

an anthology of poems and reflections for

Advent, Christmas and Epiphany

At Otley Hall, Hall Lane, Otley, Ipswich, IP6 9PA

Thursday September 3^rd, 6:30-8pm

This free event will include poetry readings, refreshments, and an opportunity to by signed copies at a discount

Contact Events@otleyhall.co.uk for bookings and further details

Otley Hall

Further events:

Friday 23rd of October 4pm Poetry reading at Sarum College Bookshop

Saturday 5th of December An Advent reflective afternoon with poems from Waiting on the Word starts 2pm at St. George’s Church, Hatley St. George

Sunday 6th December 12:30 ‘Sunday Forum’ at St. Paul’s Cathedral

an introduction to and readings from Waiting on the Word

One Book,Three Launches! (Cambridge, Houston and Hatley St. George!)

Well, my new collection of poetry, The Singing Bowl, is out at last. And this is to let you know that it is having not one, but three launches. Not because it is so stodgy and heavy that it will take three mighty hurls to get it off the ground (I hope -though you must be the judges) but because there are so many and various places with which I, (and my poetry), are somehow woven and connected.

So this Wednesday at 7:30pm there is the Cambridge Launch at St. Edward King and Martyr, the church I serve in the city centre, in and through whose ministry so much of the poetry has been written and to which my last volume, Sounding The Seasons, was dedicated. Come if you can for wine, cheese, poetry, and book signing.

Then on Friday (the 8th) we have the Houston Launch. Tempting to do this remotely, simply so that I could say’Houston we have a problem’, but I will be there for the CS Lewis Foundation’s Regional conference and they are kindly hosting a launch for the American edition of my book. It will take place at the opening reception of the conference. If you are not attending the whole conference you can still get a ticket to come to this evening event. contact Steve Elmore Here.

Finally on the 29th of Novemebr I will be doing a special launch/reading in the beautiful little church of Hatley St. George, in the village of the same name. One of the poems in the ‘Local Habitations’ section of the book is dedicated to that church and is about its unique silence and peace. they have the poem inscribed and hung on the church wall and have asked to have this special event to celebrate the publication of the book.

I hope you can get to one of these three, meantime I leave you with the Hatley St. George Poem. as always you can hear it by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button.

Hatley St. George

Stand here a while and drink the silence in.
Where clear glass lets in living light to touch
And bless your eyes. A beech tree’s tender green
Shimmers beyond the window’s lucid arch.
You look across an absent sanctuary;
No walls or roof, just holy, open space,
Leading your gaze out to the fresh-leaved beech
God planted here before you first drew breath.

Stand here awhile and drink the silence in.
You cannot stand as long and still as these;
This ancient beech and still more ancient church.
So let them stand, as they have stood, for you.
Let them disclose their gifts of time and place,
A secret kept for you through all these years.
Open your eyes. This empty church is full,
Thronging with life and light your eyes have missed.

Stand here awhile and drink the silence in.
Shields of forgotten chivalry, and rolls
Of honour for the young men gunned at Ypres,
And other monuments of our brief lives
Stand for the presence here of saints and souls
Who stood where you stand, to be blessed like you;
Clouds of witness to unclouded light
Shining this moment, in this place for you.

Stand here awhile and drink their silence in.
Annealed in glass, the twelve Apostles stand
And each of them is keeping faith for you.
This roof is held aloft, to give you space,
By graceful angels praying night and day
That you might hear some rumour of their flight
That you might feel the flicker of a wing
And let your heart fly free at last in prayer.

A Sonnet for St. Luke the Evangelist

St. Luke accompanied by his ‘creature’ the winged ox

Continuing with Sounding the Seasons, my series of sonnets for the church year, here is a sonnet for St. Luke. My sonnets, in that series, prsents the four evangelists together and the imagery in those sonnets is influenced  by the images of the four living creatures round the throne of God and the tradition that each of these creatures represents both an aspect of Christ and one of the Four Evangelists. For a good account of this tradition click here. I am drawing my inspiration both from the opening page image of each Gospel in the Lindesfarne Gospels and also from the beautiful account of the four living creatures given by St. Ireneus, part of which I quote below. For the purpose of my ‘live bloggng’  of the festivals, in the course of this year, here is St. Luke, restored to the chronological sequence. As always you can hear the poem by clicking the ‘play’ button if it appears or clicking on the title of the poem. The photographer Margot Krebs Neale has again provided a thought-provoking photograph to interpret the poem, and the artist Rebecca Merry is in the course of producing four re-interpretations of the traditional illuminated gospel images. The book with these sonnets is being published by Canterbury Press this December and I can announce here that the Book Launch will be here in Cambridge at St. Edwards on December the 5th.

‘...since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the “pillar and ground” of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh. From which fact, it is evident that the Word, the Artificer of all, He that sitteth upon the cherubim, and contains all things, He who was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit. ‘  St. Irenaeus of Lyons  (ca. 120-202 AD)  –  Adversus Haereses 3.11.8

 Luke

His gospel is itself a living creature

A ground and glory round the throne of God,

Where earth and heaven breathe through human nature

And One upon the throne sees it is good.

Luke is the living pillar of our healing,

A lowly ox, the servant of the four,

We turn his page to find his face revealing

The wonder, and the welcome of the poor.

He breathes good news to all who bear a burden

Good news to all who turn and try again,

The meek rejoice and prodigals find pardon,

A lost thief reaches paradise through pain,

The voiceless find their voice in every word

And, with Our Lady, magnify Our Lord.

Thanks to Margot Krebs Neale for this image