W.H. Auden famously said, ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ (2007: 246). Like the best aphorisms, this one makes an immediate impact and yet also repays deeper reflection. We might initially regard it as a wholly negative statement which cuts poetry down to size and resists grandiose claims for what literature can do in a life, a culture or a society. Read in this way, we might want to query, qualify or refute Auden’s claim. Yet it is possible to read the statement otherwise, as a more positive, albeit paradoxical affirmation. What if poetry really does do something, at least to those who read it, and what if that something is, paradoxically, ‘nothing’? Read in this way, Auden’s aphorism might then be gesturing towards poetry’s potential to open up creative, empty space, a space which invites the harried reader, heckled by all kinds of other discourse – each of which seeks to accomplish some particular end – into a void in which all utilitarian ends are refused and language is celebrated and experienced in all its apophatic, contemplative glory. Poetry is then distinguished from every other form of language which is concerned with specific and identifiable aims, and is the speech form that points us most inexorably to the mystery and freedom of the creative Word, source of all being and knowing.
In this collection of essays and poems by five poets who are also persons of Christian faith (generously understood), and theologians (of differing kinds), we seek to explore and reflect on the mysterious, graced potential of poetry to open up a space that some may describe as sacred, spiritual or religious, although ultimately defying precise categorisation. While many secular poets would roundly refute such a claim, there are others for whom poetry, in its forms as much as its content, is close to the language and purposes of prayer, incantation, ritual and liturgy and, by its rhythms, silences, patterns and sounds, as well as by its qualitative attention to concretion, particularity, ordinariness and otherness, can invoke a profoundly contemplative, morally serious regard for the world.
As far as we have been able to discover, there are no strictly comparable texts to what we intend and offer in this collection. There are a number of anthologies of Christian/religious/spiritual poetry (including Batchelor, 1995; Atwan, Dardess and Rosenthal, 1998; Atwan and Wieder, 2000; Astley and Robertson-Pearce, 2007) but these texts contain little prose and are trying to do something very different from what we intend. Then there are a number of prose texts that address the relation between poetry and faith (for example, Bowker, 1993; Countryman, 1999; Edwards, 2005; Griffiths, 2005; Guite, 2012), but again these represent a different genre from what we are attempting, insofar as they are solo-authored texts exploring poetry and faith in a more systematic, discursive fashion, and they tend to look to a classic tradition of religious poetry rather than being focused on contemporary verse. Then again, there are more popular books aimed at a broader spirituality audience (such as Housden, 2002, 2003, 2007; Morley, 2011). These texts do combine poems and prose discussion, with reflective comments offered on a selection of poems, but they too tend to be single-authored and less clearly rooted in one particular religious tradition. If there is anything that seeks to do what we are doing in this book, it is perhaps the journal Scintilla, published since 1997 by the Usk Valley Vaughan Association, in honour of, and continuing the tradition of, the poet-physician Henry Vaughan and his priest-alchemist twin brother, Thomas. This beautifully produced annual journal brings together literary scholarship, theological reflection and creative writing, combining new poetry with essays by living poets and critical, historical and theological articles, particularly but not exclusively on the Vaughans. We would like to think that our book stands in the same kind of tradition as this unique journal – and encourage readers who do not know of the journal to find it, read it and support it. We might also mention a Flarestack pamphlet which brings together a range of contemporary poets to reflect on the question, Is a religious poem possible in the early 21st century? (Hart, 2004) Each of the poets offers very brief reflections alongside one or two poems. Again, our book is in the same spirit and tradition as that pamphlet, but what we offer is a more extended treatment from out of the life of one particular group.
In our contributions to the present volume we all share something of our own histories and narratives of how we came to be interested in – or perhaps better, grasped by – the connections between poetry and faith, and how we understand poetry through the lens of our own particular faith traditions and perspectives. Although these narratives are offered as individual pieces which might stand on their own, their context in the life of the Diviners group to which we all belong significantly shapes and informs each piece, and this book would not have come into being without the history of the group.
We have been meeting as a group for some twelve years. Scattered around the Midlands (located respectively in Bristol, Birmingham, Coventry and Nottingham), we meet about three times a year, usually for a day, to share food and news, to read recent work and to respond to and critique each other’s writing. The group emerged out of conversations between various members, each of whom already knew at least one of the others. Rowan Williams was, for a short period, a member of the group before a new ‘day job’ as Archbishop of Canterbury precluded further involvement. We are grateful for his willingness to contribute a foreword and thus be present in this collaborative enterprise. Mark has joined the group most recently. The group is forged out of strong connecting threads, both personal and professional, as well as encompassing creative differences. Each of us is a practising member of a Christian faith tradition: two Roman Catholic (Gavin and Ruth), two Anglicans (Nicola and Mark) and one Quaker (Eleanor). (We are mindful of the fact that, in the UK, Quakers debate whether, and in what ways, they should individually or collectively espouse the historically complex label ‘Christian’.)
Each of us would regard ourselves as theologians or religious studies practitioners, though working in diverse contexts and at different levels. Gavin and Eleanor are firmly rooted in the academy, with professorial posts in British universities – Gavin’s in Catholic Theology, Eleanor’s, as an ethnographer, in Religions and Education; Mark supports clergy learning and ministerial development in a diocesan post; Nicola’s context in a church-sponsored theological institution which runs university-validated programmes combines both church and academy; and Ruth has worked in a wide variety of church, educational and social justice contexts, reflecting a more grassroots perspective of the intersections between church, society and education. While each is more or less firmly rooted in Christian tradition, we also each look to other sources and traditions for inspiration and dialogue: Eleanor has for four decades been engaged academically and personally with other – notably Hindu and Sikh – faith communities; Gavin has written on and been involved with members of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist traditions, from a Catholic standpoint; Mark looks to the ways in which poetry and creative writing are used in fields of professional development beyond the churches, and he also has a particular interest in gender studies and pastoral theology as these relate to men and masculinities; Nicola has a particular commitment to feminism and gender studies, as well as to the intersection between poetry and liturgy; and Ruth has wide-ranging commitments to art, politics and social justice.
In 2006 we were invited to organise and lead a Radio 4 Sunday Morning Service, and worked with the producer, Claire Campbell-Smith, and David Ogden’s talented choral group based in Bristol, to create a service of words and music which explored the connections between faith and poetry. It was at that point that we gave ourselves a name, happening upon ‘the Diviners’ after a great deal of banter. The name evokes the divine as well as being suggestive of our shared conviction that poetry itself may be a form of divination, a means of searching for the sacred, but also the means whereby we ourselves are searched out and our lives become the sacred ground in which the holy is discerned. Like water divining, poetry is a quest for the sources of life and renewal that the poet believes to be deeply embedded in the ground of his or her existence, yet which often remain elusive, below the obvious surface of things, necessitating exploration in uncharted territory. Sometimes the poet and the poem strike lucky, the rock is struck, waters gush forth. Sometimes the poet returns thirsty and empty, the words refuse to come or, when they do, remain inert, obfuscating, dry. Poetry, no less than water divining, requires patience, practice, repetition, failure and return, as one works the terrain over and over, paying close attention to cartography but knowing when the maps have to be abandoned in pursuit of the spring of life.
The task that we set ourselves in the creation of this text was to each select poems which we wished to represent our body of work. These would be poems that express from many perspectives our individual engagement with divinity, poems which, icon-like, allow the reader or listener to go beyond or through the surface. The further challenge was to set out in prose our understanding and experience of faith and poetry, angel and muse, wonder and word. In the process we would be sharing our life-stories and providing contextual comment on our selected poems. After sharing our drafts we met to reflect further and to plan the integration of our contributions.
At this point the distinctive voices and the resonances between them rang out. Gavin provides autobiographical and theological reflections about poetry and divine creativity and of how we participate in that creativity when we read and write poems. Nicola’s essay speaks of feminist theology and the quest for authenticity and integration within a poetic discourse that is also a form of theology. Eleanor’s contribution – as an ethnographer who is part of a religiously plural family – springs from experience of diversity as ‘inter-spirituality’, an interior dialogue. The spirituality born of engagement with issues of poverty and justice infuses Ruth’s work. Mark’s reflection on the formation and identity of a Christian poet draws on the concerns of Practical Theology and spirituality which underlie his writing.
Every reader will detect different resonances between our voices. In terms of subject, one convergence is Death Row (Gavin and Ruth), another is urban spaces (Ruth and Eleanor), another is sexuality and gendered approaches to faith (Nicola, Ruth and Mark). Gavin and Eleanor suggest experiences of diversity which contrast as much as they converge – Gavin with a family history of conversion from Hindu to Catholic and of migration from India, via Africa, to England; Eleanor with a trajectory that took her from her English Protestant background to India and then (in England) into a Hindu family. The sharing of childhoods and upbringing enables us, and the reader, to situate our poetry with more awareness. Worship – as response to ‘nature’, as liturgical form, as the experience of the Mass or Meeting for Worship – replenishes and evokes some, indeed much, of our writing. The contexts in which we live out our personal lives and carry on our professional work – temples and churches, hostels and prisons, personal encounters and public occasions – interweave with other forms of encounter and inspiration: works of art, painting, sculpture and music.
Hebrew/Christian scripture has quite explicitly brought both shape and content to Mark’s and Nicola’s poetry in different ways. As poetry published or shared in congregations and communities, much of this work finds expression in liturgical use in mainstream churches and more experimental, innovative settings. Mark’s editorial and translation work as a poet gathering together and arranging poems from both ‘secular’ sources and Christian tradition provides contemporary churches with poetry resources that interpret and illuminate scripture in public worship and in the practice of personal devotion. Nicola’s work as a feminist liturgist has enabled a particular channelling of the poetic voice into contexts in which women and men are seeking new forms of public ritual and prayer.
For the reader it may be hoped that the sound of five differing voices will echo, re-echo and reverberate, creating the surround sound, the edgeless ‘bigness’ of realities which are beyond grammar. For all of us this volume marks a rite of passage. For Ruth, Mark and Nicola poetry has been a part of their professional repertoire. Ruth has led writing classes in a variety of contexts, including prisons; Mark draws on poetry in leading Quiet Days and retreats, in teaching theology as well as helping clergy and others to reflect on the experience of professional practice; similarly, Nicola’s teaching frequently draws on poetry, as does her work in conducting retreats, and she has developed a particular commitment to using women’s poetry as a means of empowerment for women in search of the sacred. Alongside this public location for poetry as it speaks into the community of faith or the professional, educational spheres there is also the more intimate place of poetry which has its location as a personal means of expression to be shared in the artistic exchange of small groups of poets, occasional readings and personal communication.
In part the commitment to producing this book resulted from our shared, deepening realisation of the importance to participants in our classes and groups of engaging with spirituality’s articulation as poetry while also discovering poetry’s rootedness both in faith and in its felt absences. Ruth’s time as poet-in-residence in a school for students with learning difficulties helped her to understand that the feel, shape and sound of a poem conveyed meaning, sometimes religious meaning, in ways that words alone cannot. Nicola and Eleanor were stirred and exhilarated by the response and creativity of participants in a course entitled ‘Poetry as Pilgrimage’ at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, Birmingham, UK in 2012. Gavin has used poetry in catechesis and has run day retreats on poetry and art as prayer, exploring some of the ways in which both art and poetry may help us to pray. He has also written a poetry-laden script for the BBC morning worship which led to the Diviners’ working as a group for the BBC. Mark’s collaboration as a poet with other theologians (biblical scholar Paula Gooder and practical theologian James Woodward) in writing reflections on the four Gospels (Woodward, Gooder and Pryce, 2011, 2012, 2013, forthcoming 2014) shows the powerful role that poetry can play alongside other theological approaches in interpreting scripture and strengthening the life of prayer and faith.
The task of preparing this book has impelled or at least allowed each of us to track down poetry’s part in our lives over some five decades and to discern ways in which poetry offers and discloses a unity between our personal and professional selves. We found ourselves acknowledging the significance of being a part of a community of practice – the Diviners (and in some cases other critically supportive poetry groups too). At the same time this current project suggests possibilities for meeting with many more people for whom poetry and spirituality are significant.
Our hope is that this book will be of interest to both poets and theologians, to all who read poetry and are interested in the connections between literature and faith, but also to those seeking new inspiration for preaching, liturgy and pastoral care, and to those committed to the practice and nurturing of a contemplative attitude to life in which profound attention and respect are offered to words and to the creative Word at work in the world and in all creatures. Informed by the poets’ autobiographies, writing practices and diverse Christian backgrounds, as well as by scholarship and experience, the contributions open up many issues for exploration and reflection: the nature of creativity and the distinction between divine and human creation; the creative process as a process of exploration, epiphany and revelation; craft and labour in the writing process; the forging and problematising of identity through the writing process; the diverse ways in which art (in this case, poetry) can reflect, challenge and be in dialogue with faith, and the ways in which faith can inform and challenge art; the exercise of power and voice in both poetry and faith and ways in which race, gender, culture and other such factors interact and shape poetic and theological discourse; and many more themes, some of which, doubtless, we ourselves are only dimly aware of.
In what follows, through a mixture of poetry and prose, we seek to evoke something of the elusive and compulsive process of divining sacred words. We invite our readers to discover the mysterious process of making nothing happen.
Astley, Neil and Pamela Robertson-Pearce (eds), Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds (Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2007)
Atwan, Robert, George Dardess and Peggy Rosenthal (eds), Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Atwan, Robert and Laurance Wieder (eds), Chapters into Verse: A Selection of Poetry in English Inspired by the Bible from Genesis through Revelation (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Auden, W. H, ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’, Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson (London: Faber & Faber, 2007, revised edition)
Batchelor, Mary (ed.), The Lion Christian Poetry Collection (Oxford: Lion, 1995)
Bowker, John, Hallowed Ground: Religions and the Poetry of Place (London: SPCK, 1993)
Countryman, William, The Poetic Imagination: An Anglican Spiritual Tradition (London: DLT, 1999)
Edwards, David, Poets and God: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake (London: DLT, 2005)
Griffiths, Richard, Poetry and Prayer (London/New York: Continuum, 2005)
Guite, Malcolm, Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012)
Hart, David (ed.) Is a Religious Poem Possible in the Early 21st Century? (Alvechurch: Flarestack, 2004)
Housden, Roger, Ten Poems to Change Your Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002)
Housden, Roger, Ten Poems to Set You Free (New York: Harmony, 2003)
Housden, Roger, Ten Poems to Change Your Life – Again and Again (New York: Harmony, 2007)
Morley, Janet, The Heart’s Time: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter (London: SPCK, 2011)
Woodward, James, Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce, Journeying with Mark (London: SPCK, 2011)
Woodward, James, Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce, Journeying with Luke (London: SPCK, 2012)
Woodward, James, Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce, Journeying with Matthew (London: SPCK, 2013)
Woodward, James, Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce, Journeying with John (London: SPCK, forthcoming 2014)