Echoes from Eternity: 22. Seamus Heaney out and about
If you find yourself talking about nature in poetry, it is inevitable before too long that Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) is going to crop up. He was a master: prolific and powerful poet, Nobel Literature Prize laureate, Oxford Professor of Poetry, versatile translator of epics, a truly prophetic voice. So it’s good to come to him. […]
1917 and the Futile Pilgrimage
I got rather carried away after I saw the latest Sam Mendes film (in the cinema with friends in the States last October… who’d have believed it possible in these strange lockdown days??). 1917 worked its way into the recesses of my brain in extraordinary ways and ever since, I haven’t been able to stop […]
Echoes from Eternity 21. Gerard Manley Hopkins in Spring
It’s almost as if there’s a contradiction in terms between the glories of the early English spring and this season of Covid19 horror and fear. UK stats are looking horrendous. And yet, and yet… The natural world is breathing deeply and perhaps somehow rejuvenating more than it has for decades. Is that perhaps a providential […]
Echoes from Eternity: 20. C. S. Lewis’ poems
Most don’t associate Lewis with his poetry. My understanding is, however, he would have far preferred to be known as a poet than almost anything else he wrote (and which brought him countless loyal readers). These three have stood out to me for a while, especially the last one. The first brilliantly articulates the difference […]
Echoes from Eternity 19. William Blake in Nicholas Winton’s Memorial Garden
William Blake (1757-1827) was one of a kind. A printer, an illustrator, a painter, a poet, a visionary, a provocateur. And that’s just the start of it. But to read some of his verse, for a change, I took the dog off to the park near us in which there is a rather lovely memorial […]
Echoes from Eternity 18. John Donne
John Donne’s poetry is often difficult, sometimes perplexing and troubling, but always rewarding if closely attended to. He completely loses me quite often. But I keep returning to him. Here are four short pieces, as we experience the first Lockdown Easter week. The inability to travel outside somehow forces is to travel within, to do […]
Easter Greetings from around the world!
No vlog today instead there’s THIS…! Χριστός άνεστη! Αληθώς Ανέστη! If this video doesn’t display, click here Was fun to be part of this great project from the Rabbit Room folks. 40 countries 25 languages I identified: English (American, Canadian and British at least!), Norwegian, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Albanian, Spanish, Bosnian, Georgian, Modern Greek, Czech, […]
Echoes from Eternity 17. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison poems
This is Holy Saturday. It’s an in-between day, a limbo. It is deeply unsettling, especially if you need your world to be categorisable, identifiable, graspable. This day is anything but. Full of mystery, full of pain and fears. If that seems remote or obscure, then put yourself in the shoes of those who followed Jesus […]
Echoes from Eternity 16: John Stott’s Cross of Christ
It is Good Friday so the subject matter for the day’s reading presented itself easily enough. Choosing what to read, however, was a very different matter. There is so much. In the end, I plumped for a profound and moving section from Uncle John’s masterwork, The Cross of Christ. It is a book I have […]
Echoes from Eternity 15: John Bunyan’s Doubting Castle
For this Maundy Thursday, here’s a favourite purple passage. If I’d been on the ball, I would have obviously put the Alan Paton passage tonight. But I’ve not (and probably never have) been on the proverbial ball (proverbiball?). John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is undoubtedly a classic, one which all educated people in the English-speaking […]
Echoes from Eternity 14: Maya Angelou
Today, the voice of an angel. Nope, I don’t have delusions of celestial proportions. I’m referring to the great African-American writer, Maya Angelou (1928-2014) who died not so long ago. In fact, I thought it was quite recent, but my mind was playing tricks on me. She had a beautiful way with words. Breathtaking sometimes. […]
Echoes from Eternity 13. Christopher Smart’s Cat Jeoffry
I know little about Christopher Smart (1722-1771), apart from the fact that the suffered the torments, like his almost contemporary William Cowper, of an eighteenth-century asylum. But out of that affliction came the unique, weird, effervescent hymn of praise Jubilate Agno (‘Rejoice in the Lamb’). His horrific experiences find their way into the poem, but […]
