A weekend of music, art, poetry and a Confirmation Service

On Friday, at St Andrew's Wickford, Suffolk-Essex musician, Rev Simpkins, presented an evening of acoustic music of great imagination and charm, inspired by the history and geography of East Anglia.

The Rev performed songs from his acclaimed folk albums Big Sea and Saltings, before his band Pissabed Prophet, formed with Dingus Khan’s Ben Brown and Nick Daldry, took to the stage to play their first ever acoustic set.

The Rev’s sweeping melodies, rich harmonies, and fascinating lyrics have won him both a cult following and national acclaim. This was a rare chance to experience the breadth of the Rev’s work in one evening.

Read my interview for Seen&Unseen with Rev Simpkins (in which we discuss how music is an expression of humanity and his faith) and my review of Pissabed Prophet for International Times.

Yesterday, I attended Everywhere is Heaven: Malcolm Guite, Christopher Southgate, Roger Wagner, a poetry reading to open Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer/Roger Wagner, an exhibition at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham. The poetry reading took place in Holy Trinity Cookham, the setting of Spencer's Cookham Resurrection.

The exhibition is the Gallery’s first collaboration with a living artist. Roger Wagner has been deeply inspired by Stanley Spencer’s paintings, and both artists have been described as ‘visionary geniuses’, each seeking to evoke the mystical in everyday experience. Just as Spencer found Cookham to be ‘heaven on earth’, so Roger evokes biblical happenings in contemporary settings.

Born in 1957, Roger Wagner read English at Oxford University before studying at the Royal Academy School of Art. He has been represented in London since 1985 by Anthony Mould Ltd exhibiting there many times. Other one man shows include retrospectives at the Ashmolean Museum in 1994 and 2010. He has produced several books of illustrated poems and translations: Fire Sonnets (1984), In a Strange Land (1988), A Silent Voice (1997), Out of the Whirlwind (1997). The Book of Praises – a translation of the psalms Book One(1994), Book Two (2008), Book Three (2013).

Malcolm Guite is the former Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge and author of various books on contemporary spirituality. In addition to this he is a poet and singer-songwriter and fronts the Cambridge-based band Mystery Train. In 2023 he was awarded the Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship, for his outstanding multifaceted promotion of the Gospels through poetry, public speaking and scholarship.

Christopher Southgate works at the University of Exeter as a Professor in Theology. He has been publishing his poetry since 1985. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, including a verse biography of T.S. Eliot – A Love and its Sounding (Salzburg, 1997). He has won a number of awards for poetry. He was also commended in the 2009 National Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the 2022 Bridport Prize.

Today, we have had a Basildon Deanery Confirmation Service at St Gabriel's Pitsea led by The Rt Revd Adam Atkinson, the new Bishop of Bradwell who spoke about encouraging one another as we go forward on our faith journeys. There were 18 candidates from three parishes, including two from Wickford and Runwell.

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Pissabed Prophet - Waspdrunk.