Poetry Update

My first review of poetry for Tears in the Fence was of 'Modern Fog' by Chris Emery. My second review was of 'The Salvation Engine' by Rupert Loydell, my third was of 'For All That’s Lost' by David Miller, and my fourth was of 'Late Inscriptions' by David Miller. 

My poetry reviews for Stride include a review of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, a review of Temporary Archive: Poems by Women of Latin America, a review of Fukushima Dreams by Andrea Moorhead, a review of Endangered Sky by Kelly Grovier and Sean Scully, a review of John F. Deane's Selected & New Poems, a review of God's Little Angel by Sue Hubbard and a review of Spencer Reece's 'Acts'.

My poetry-related pieces for IT are: an interview with artist, poet, priest Spencer Reece, an interview with the poet Chris Emery, plus reviews of: 'Collected Poems' by Kevin Crossley-Holland; 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, and 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller. 

I have also published pieces on poetry at Seen and Unseen - a profile of the poet Theresa Lola - and the Journal of Theological Studies - a review of Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination by Malcolm Guite. 

For more on poetry, read my ArtWay interview with David Miller here and my interview with Rupert Loydell here. See also Rupert Loydell's interview with poet and musician Steve Scott. My own dialogues with Steve can be read here, here, here, here, and here. For thoughts on the links between poetry and prayer see here and here.

See also 'Connections and contemplation in poetry and prayer', a brief survey of the connections between poetry and prayer has been published by Amethyst Review. It looks at the connections between the two and highlights both poems about prayer and poems that are prayers.

My poems to have been published in Amethyst Review are: 'Prayer', 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'. I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.

'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:

• 'Barking';
• 'Bradwell';
• 'Broomfield';
• 'Pleshey'; and
• 'Runwell'.

These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. International Times have also published other of my poems, including 'Spencer Reece at Bemerton' which is based on the visit that I made to Bemerton in 2026 with Spencer Reece, 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, and 'The Edge of Chaos', a state of existence poem. Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.

Several of my short stories have also been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

For more of my poems, see here, and for my poetic meditations, see here.

My key literature posts (including poetry) are:

• There were giants in those days (1)
• There were giants in those days (2)
• There were Giants in those days (3)
• There were giants in those days (4)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (1)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (2)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (3)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (4)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (5)
• The poetry of connection
• Debate: Has Fiction Lost It's Faith?
• Jesus is having a moment in literary fiction
• Endo & Scorsese: Approaching Silence
• Contemporary Fiction and Christianity
• Debate: Has Fiction Lost It's Faith? (2)
• Jack Clemo: The Invading Gospel
• Dealing with faith and with secularism is difficult but necessary now
• The poet’s eloquently passionate struggle at the junction of doubt and devotion
• Christian Arts renaissance: Major or minor?
• T.S. Eliot: Christianity, fragmentation and reconciliation
• Jesus Novels & Films: The Greatest Story Ever Told
• Acts of the Assassins and Jesus Novels
• Czeslaw Milosz, Oscar Milosz and Simone Weil
• Blogs: cryingforavision & Stride magazine
• Tasos Leviaditis: The Blind Man with the Lamp
• Religious concerns in Greek poetry
• Thomas Merton and Latin American poets
• American Catholic poets & writers
• Connections of Sister Corita Kent and Norman Nicholson
• Ernesto Cardenal RIP
• Czeslaw Milosz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, Oskar Milosz, and Aleksander Wat
• Faith, Mystery & Poetry
• Elizabeth Jennings & David Gascoyne: Mystical Experience and the Making of Poems
• Roots of the Catholic Literary Revival

See also 'Art and Faith: Decades of Engagement: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

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Andrew Rumsey - The Memorial Service Order Of Friends.

Tears in the Fence: Review - Late Inscriptions by David Miller (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press)

My latest review for Tears in the Fence is of 'Last Inscriptions' by David Miller:

'each word used is significant because each word bears meaning. Miller leans on and stresses each word because they bear the weight of sorrow. Jebb says that Miller creates ‘with a balance of minimalism, repetition and the abstract, words isolated and ringing.’

A similar minimalism is also to be found in the content of these poems. In the words of the Del Amitri song, in these poems ‘nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all’. Harriet Neville notes the happenings as being: a bird landing on the door, waiting to be fed; a dog entering the bedroom through an open back door; and Belgian waffles and eggs Florentine shared with old friends. Although nothing significant seems to happen, actually everything happens and we, as is the poet, are changed.'

For more on David Miller, see my interview with him for ArtWay and other reviews of his poetry collections - here, here, and here.

Also mentioned in the review is a series of poems published by Stride Magazine that were inspired by The Prayer, an art-installation that tries to explore the supernatural through artificial intelligence. My poem 'The algorithms of prayer?' was also part of this series. 

Tears in the Fence is an internationalist literary magazine based in the U.K. Publishing a variety of contemporary writers from around the world, it provides critical reviews of recent books, anthologies and pamphlets and essays on a diversity of significant modern and contemporary English and American poets. Each issue features a number of regular columnists adding wide focus and independent thought on the contemporary poetry world. A wide range of book and pamphlet reviews are also published on the magazine’s blog.

My first review for Tears in the Fence was of 'Modern Fog' by Chris Emery. My second review was of 'The Salvation Engine' by Rupert Loydell. My third review was of 'For All That’s Lost' by David Miller

My poetry reviews for Stride include a review of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, a review of Temporary Archive: Poems by Women of Latin America, a review of Fukushima Dreams by Andrea Moorhead, a review of Endangered Sky by Kelly Grovier and Sean Scully, a review of John F. Deane's Selected & New Poems, a review of God's Little Angel by Sue Hubbard and a review of Spencer Reece's 'Acts'.

My poetry-related pieces for IT are: an interview with artist, poet, priest Spencer Reece, an interview with the poet Chris Emery, plus reviews of: 'Collected Poems' by Kevin Crossley-Holland; 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, albums by Deacon Blue, Mumford and Sons, and Andrew Rumsey, and 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller. I have also published pieces on poetry at Seen and Unseen - a profile of the poet Theresa Lola - and the Journal of Theological Studies - a review of Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination by Malcolm Guite. For more on poetry, read my ArtWay interview with David Miller here and my interview with Rupert Loydell here. See also Rupert Loydell's interview with poet and musician Steve Scott. My own dialogues with Steve can be read here, here, here, here, and here. For thoughts on the links between poetry and prayer see here and here.

My poems to have been published in Amethyst Review are: 'Prayer', 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'. I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.

'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:

• 'Barking';
• 'Bradwell';
• 'Broomfield';
• 'Pleshey'; and
• 'Runwell'.

These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. International Times have also published other of my poems, including 'Spencer Reece at Bemerton' which is based on the visit that I made to Bemerton in 2026 with Spencer Reece, 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, and 'The Edge of Chaos', a state of existence poem. Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.

Several of my short stories have also been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

For more of my poems, see here, and for my poetic meditations, see here.

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David Miller Multi-Media Reading.

Church Times: Art review: In Attendance: Paying Attention in a Fragile World (Fitzrovia Chapel, London W1)

My latest exhibition review for Church Times is on In Attendance: Paying Attention in a Fragile World at Fitzrovia Chapel:

'It draws on the chapel’s heritage as a place of sanctuary and reflection by encouraging visitors to explore attention not as rigid focus, but as a receptive and dynamic engagement with the world, inspired by the philosophy of Simone Weil.

Weil wrote: “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” Ellen McGrath Smith has noted that invoking “the spiritual writing of Simone Weil”, including that assertion, broadens the possibility for poetry, as it also does for art, as prayer, regardless of content, since all such acts are acts of “acute mindfulness”. David Miller finds an earlier source for such ideas in Nicolas Malebranche, who said that attention “is the natural prayer of the soul”.

Weil, he suggests, echoed this, consciously or not, in her similar assertion.'

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here, those for Seen & Unseen are here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now.

International Times: Beyond Language

My latest book review for International Times is on What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise by David Miller:

"This is principally a book of conversations and juxtapositions where the gaps and pauses and what is between are as significant as the links and lines and flow. Sight and sound are juxtaposed; what is said being as meaningful as what is seen in silence. Dreams, memories, images, stories, phone calls, conversations are all recounted, reimagined, remembered and re-membered in an attempt to commune with the dead and navigate grief."

For more on David Miller see here and here.

My earlier pieces for IT are an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, plus reviews of: Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel; T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone; Helaine Blumenfeld's Together exhibition, 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt, the first Pissabed Prophet album - 'Zany in parts, moving in others, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more unusual, inspired & profound album this year. ‘Pissabed Prophet’ will thrill, intrigue, amuse & inspire' - and 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.

Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'.

My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

IT have also published a poem, The ABC of creativity, which covers attention, beginning and creation.

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David Miller & SPIRITWORK - Moments.

Latest publications from David Miller

With Matrix I & II, David Miller constructs a web of memories, music, birds, colours, images and abstractions into a beautiful, meditative poetic sequence.

Keith Jebb writes that 'Miller’s poetry in Matrix is minimalist, but it is not austere; it is spare, but generous rather than dry. As with his prose poetry, there are buried quotations and allusions, a richness of layering. And there is the balance of repetition, compositions of colour replaced by their words, simple ink drawings.'

‘Miller’s impressionistic world of sight and sound, of memory and desire, is an unforgettable realisation of the movement of age’ - Ian Brinton, Tears in the Fence

Matrix I & II constitutes the first part of a trilogy - the other parts being circle square triangle (Spuyten Duyvil) and Afterword (Shearsman Books).

Norman Weinstein notes that 'circle square triangle, David Miller’s autobiography in poetry brings to mind the renewing spiritual force of geometric forms, their haunting presence musically and visually in this poet whose alchemical creativity is as realized in jazz improvisation and visual art as in poetry.'

Afterword can 'be seen as a poem sequence: of memories and meditations, dreams and (for want of a better word) visions. It’s increasingly invaded by images of destruction and desolation: of nature, of animals, of humankind; with those images prefigured by the opening passages... It’s a poem that’s concerned with limits and the possible surpassing or exceeding of limits.'

“David Miller writes: ‘any writing that engages with the spiritual has to be dialogic provisional &open-ended in nature otherwise we’re not talking about an engagement with the spiritual’ – and Miller’s new text does engage with the spiritual. Both learned and lyrical, it creates lyric utterance through a comprehension of the learning. David Miller both guides and follows – in the wisest European tradition. This is an overwhelming accomplishment.” —Tom Lowenstein

Miller has also written recently about the poet Cid Corman and the novelist Isadore Lhevinne. 

Among the Neighbors 25 is an expanded version of Miller's Cid Corman and ORIGIN: A Personal Account, which was originally published in Two Masters. Origin was an American poetry magazine that was founded in 1951 by Corman. The magazine provided an early platform for the work of  important, ground-breaking poets, who collectively created an alternative to academic poetry. Miller was, for a period, an Associate Editor with Origin.

Lhevinne wrote that 'My books are just like my life: I seem to possess the parlous gift of displeasing all groups of readers at all times.' In his Preface to Lhevinne's Ariade, Miller describes him as 'an enigmatic figure—a brilliant Jewish American modernist writer of the 1920s/30s', 'someone with such extraordinary talent' who has, nevertheless, 'slipped into totally undeserved semi-oblivion.'

David Miller is an Australian-born poet, critic and artist currently living in Dorset. His books include Spiritual Letters (Contraband Books), Reassembling Still: Collected Poems (Shearsman), The Waters of Marah (Shearsman) and Stromata (Burning Deck Press). David’s writing is celebrated in At the Heart of Things: the poetry and prose of David Miller (Stride). His influences as a writer include friend and mentor Robert Lax.

My interview with David for ArtWay can be read here and my review of his Some Other Shadows for Stride is here.

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David Miller - A Prepared Reading.

Stride: 'The questioning hope of transcendence'

Check out my review of John F. Deane's Selected & New Poems for Stride Magazine:

'He has written of how the Roman Catholic faith he knew then, in childhood, was 'persistent as Achill rains' and associated with 'physical and spiritual endurance'. In his Artist’s Statement on the British Council website, he explains that he writes poetry and fiction to help him recover what he has 'lost, through personal experience, and through doubt and hesitations because of contemporary philosophies and events, in the area of faith' through his loss of affiliation with strict Catholicism. As a result, his work now 'is to re-locate, to re-name and to re-evaluate the Christian experience and values, not tied to any individual church or churches'. He writes 'to set the Christ-life echoing'...

With collections such as Irish Poetry of Faith and Doubt: The Cold Heaven, The Outlaw Christ and Darkness Between Stars, his own work, and his Faith and Poetry memoir Give Dust a Tongue, Deane has demonstrated the continuing relevance of a religious poetic which 'owns the power to grasp the timeless out of the temporal' and which, while insisting on the certainty of humanity’s 'insignificance in the immensity of this hostile universe, yet retains at least the questioning hope of transcendence'. His particular religious poetic is one built on the insights of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weil, Teilhard de Chardin and the Liberation Theologians.'

For more on John F. Deane click here.

My other reviews for Stride include a review of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, a review of Temporary Archive: Poems by Women of Latin America, a review of Fukushima Dreams by Andrea Moorhead, a review of Endangered Sky by Kelly Grovier and Sean Scully, and review of God's Little Angel by Sue Hubbard. To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'. Read my ArtWay interview with David Miller here.

Stride magazine was founded in 1982. Since then it has had various incarnations, most recently in an online edition since the late 20th century. You can visit its earlier incarnation at http://stridemagazine.co.uk.

I have read the poetry featured in Stride and, in particular, the work of its editor Rupert Loydell over many years and was very pleased that Rupert gave a poetry reading when I was at St Stephen Walbrook.

Rupert Loydell is a poet, painter, editor and publisher, and senior lecturer in English with creative writing at Falmouth University. He is interested in the relationship of visual art and language, collaborative writing, sequences and series, as well as post-confessional narrative, experimental music and creative non-fiction.

He has edited Stride magazine for over 30 years, and was managing editor of Stride Books for 28 years. His poetry books include Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone (both published by Shearsman), and The Fantasy Kid (for children).

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John F. Deane - Canticle.

ArtWay: “Form welcomes the formless home”

My latest interview for ArtWay is with noted UK poet, fiction writer, painter, and musician, David Miller. In this interview we discuss his work and the “interrelation, symbiosis and overlap” between writing and visual art:

"I know it’s a cliché, but the creative does have to be set over against the destructive. Always. Clichés are sometimes clichés for a good reason, they’re just plain right but have been said so often that people prefer ironies instead.

A human-centred view of things has left us with an estrangement from non-human animals as well as other earthly creatures, it has damaged our relations with the planet itself because of human greed and wilful ignorance. It has also separated us from the divine. We are now living with the dreadful consequences."

My review of Miller's 'Some Other Shadows' for Stride Magazine can be read here. In commending '(close)', I wrote that: "David Miller examines words and phrases as if they are displayed on a rotating stand enabling us to view them from a myriad of different perspectives. In his poetry, prose and prose poems, things are never simply what they seem; there is always something more, something deeper, something beyond. Whether creating expansive word collages or paring poems down to their constituent parts, he is a skilled craftsperson utilising concision, elision, contrast and paradox to open up meanings as one opens up Matryoshka Dolls. At the heart of his vision are pathways leading us to the experience of expanse."

My visual meditations for ArtWay include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Jake Flood, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Gwen John, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Sidney Nolan, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton, Anna Sikorska, Alan Stewart, Jan Toorop, Andrew Vessey, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

My Church of the Month reports include: All Saints Parish Church, Tudeley, Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, St Michael and All Angels Berwick and St Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

Blogs for ArtWay include: Congruity and controversy: exploring issues for contemporary commissions; Ervin Bossanyi: A vision for unity and harmony; Georges Rouault and André Girard: Crucifixion and Resurrection, Penitence and Life Anew; Photographing Religious Practice; Spirituality and/in Modern Art; and The Spirituality of the Artist-Clown.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker, Peter Koenig and Belinda Scarlett. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.

I have reviewed: Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe and Jazz, Blues, and Spirituals.

Other of my writings for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Church Times can be found here. Those for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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David Miller & SpiritWORK - Moments.

(close) by David Miller

 

(close) is the new collection of poetry and prose by noted UK poet, fiction writer, painter, and musician David Miller:    

"There is a haunting scent of loss in these poems that prompts me to recall what Miller wrote in 1976 about Jack Spicer's friend Robin Blaser:                                                                                            Blaser's language is a dense language, folded in upon itself and continually alive with interruptions ...    The language of CLOSE is a Beckettian hellish half-light in which the near and the untouchable seem both tangible and yet 'pared down'. However, it possesses what all important reflections upon loss reveal:                                                                                                                                                Unknowing: an engagement with the unknown.                                                                                    This deeply moving sequence of poetry and prose taps upon the reader's door: enter."                              - Ian Brinton

"David Miller here writes poems about death, about a death, where grief, love and sentiment are shorn of sentimentality and the 'show' of grief. He does this with a balance of minimalism, repetition and the abstract, words isolated and ringing. There is a poem here in memory of Robert Lax, a poet Miller admires immensely, and few have pitched words in space, found the pitch of words, like Miller and Lax."
- Keith Jebb

"David Miller examines words and phrases as if they are displayed on a rotating stand enabling us to view them from a myriad of different perspectives. In his poetry, prose and prose poems, things are never simply what they seem; there is always something more, something deeper, something beyond. Whether creating expansive word collages or paring poems down to their constituent parts, he is a skilled craftsperson utilising concision, elision, contrast and paradox to open up meanings as one opens up Matryoshka Dolls. At the heart of his vision are pathways leading us to the experience of expanse."
- Revd Jonathan Evens

Earlier this year Miller also published Time, Wisdom, & Koalas, a new work of fantastic fiction.

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SpiritWORK - Draw Me In.

Support and strengthening in difficulties

Here's the reflection I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning on the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Mary was an obscure young Jewish girl who became one of the most important figures in the global faith that is Christianity. She and Elizabeth were caught up in events with revolutionary implications and this was far from easy. “Behind Elizabeth and Zechariah's joy at the birth of their son John was the knowledge that they had lost an inconsolably long number of years to enjoy watching him grow up.” “At the edge of Gabriel's annunciation was the social stress that Mary would endure in a society where it was all about your embedded role in the community.” She was not believed, either by those closest to her and those who didn’t really know her. Engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred, as she was found to be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but, if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding characterised the response to Mary wherever she went. And “lurking over Joseph's shoulder was the gossip that would nag him all his life, that he is merely the putative father of Jesus.” (W. David O. Taylor - http://artspastor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-annunciation-really-weird-story.html)

The anthropologist Daniel Miller was quoted in ‘The Big Issue’ as saying that “Christmas is a festival that aims to make the family not just sacred but an idiom for society more generally, including the local community or neighbourhood but also the national family.” In Britain, he suggests, “we place considerable emphasis on re-establishing a version of the domestic at Christmas time, rediscovering a certain sentimentality for this idealised version of family life.” The article then notes that, of course, “this rose-tinted vision is a world away from the reality many people live through at Christmas” because we do not enjoy “such an idealised family festival.”

However, if we were to grasp the unconventional and non-idealised relationships which God chose to reveal himself and be incarnated through the birth of Jesus – a conception outside of marriage, a relationship on the brink of divorce, a foster-father, a birth in cramped and crowded circumstances, an immediate threat to life followed by refugee status – we might then understand the reality of incarnation; of God with us in the reality, not the ideality, of our lives.

Bearing all this in mind, we can imagine how much Mary needed the moment of empathy and inspiration described in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1.39-56) because the experience of being the God-bearer involved such difficulty. We can imagine how important it was to her to be with a relative who not only believed her but was also partway through her own miraculous pregnancy. The relief that she would have felt at being believed and understood would have been immense and then there is the shared moment of divine inspiration when the Holy Spirit comes on them, the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, and as Elizabeth blesses Mary, Mary is inspired to sing the Magnificat. In the face of so much disbelief and lack of support, this confirmation that they were both following God’s will, would have been overwhelming.

We can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. We can also learn from this moment when God gives her both human empathy through Elizabeth and divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit to be a support and strengthening in the difficulties which she faced as God-bearer. Our own experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks to trust and preserve while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and strengthening.

Malcolm Guite, in his sonnet for the Feast of the Visitation, captures well the miraculous reversal of expectations that occurred in the story of Mary and Elizabeth:

Here is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth with all called ‘past their prime’
They sing today for all the great unsung
Women who turned eternity to time
Favoured of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets who bring the best in us to birth.

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Malcolm Guite and Steve Bell - The Singing Bowl.

The Age of Destruction and Lies and (close)

 Here are upcoming collections by two of my favourite poets: 

Rupert M Loydell - The Age of Destruction and Lies
Published June 2023. Paperback, 104pp, 9 x 6ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848618893

In this new book of poems Rupert Loydell writes about the world he now finds himself living in, questioning the damage caused by time, memory, lockdown, aging, politics, lies, neglect and disinformation. Whether grappling with social history, corrupt data, roadbuilding, Grenfell Tower, urban graffiti, faith and fine art, or 'the fickleness of language', these damaged prayers and disbelieving explorations are 'configured for maximum twitch'. And despite the resigned conclusion that 'we are only ever likely to have a clear backwards view', and even though 'it is totally absurd to expect answers that might help explain our world', Loydell clings to the way that 'memory is all about being able to change the past', and notes that 'the future is here right now'.

Rupert Loydell is the editor of Stride, a contributing editor to International Times and a Senior Lecturer at Falmouth University. He has many books of poetry in print, including Dear Mary, The Return of the Man Who Has Everything, Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone, all published by Shearsman, who also produced Encouraging Signs, a book of essays, articles and interviews. He has co-authored many collaborative works, and edited anthologies for Knives Forks & Spoons Press, Shearsman, and Salt. He also writes about post-punk music, pedagogy, poetry and film for academic journals and books.

'At times hard-hitting, at times biting, Loydell’s poems pull beauty from the broken contexts of a rudderless society. It is poetry of rebellion and of urgency that underscores the need for poetry, art, conversation, and friendship in what is rapidly becoming an alienating, contextless world.' —Andrea Moorhead

'Rupert Loydell’s world is strangely beautiful, or beautifully strange, but it’s also strangely familiar. What I like about Loydell’s work is his commitment to a kind of truth, not to experience so much as to language.' —Magma

'Loydell explored how we navigate the world around us, seen and unseen; how we might wonder, explain, and start to understand.' —Between

'[...] brilliantly surreal, acutely observed and funny.' —Ambit

https://www.shearsman.com/store/Rupert-M-Loydell-The-Age-of-Destruction-and-Lies-p542423549

For David Miller's next publication (close) from Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, I've written the following appreciation:

"David Miller examines words and phrases as if they are displayed on a rotating stand enabling us to view them from a myriad of different perspectives. In his poetry, prose and prose poems, things are never simply what they seem; there is always something more, something deeper, something beyond. Whether creating expansive word collages or paring poems down to their constituent parts, he is a skilled craftsperson utilising concision, elision, contrast and paradox to open up meanings as one opens up Matryoshka Dolls. At the heart of his vision are pathways leading us to the experience of expanse."

In reviewing Some Other Shadows for Stride Magazine, I wrote that:

"David Miller, under the influence of the sublime Robert Lax, is past and present master of just such a contemplative approach. Both combine close attention to each word chosen, the resonances of each word, and that word’s position on the page, with an equally close attention to the ordinary events of daily life and the depths that their words reveal of those events ...

Miller’s like and unlike images, questions and thoughts – affirmations and negations - are held together to form a whole that is simple yet complex, without contradiction because both are owned and honoured ...

Miller writes of Lax, that “it is the gentle yet strong focus, lucidity and faithfulness of the act of attention (to words, to the things and the people around him, to whatever he names in poems) that constitutes one of the most salient features of Lax’s poetry and also his life.” The same focus can be seen in Miller’s more diverse and genre crossing works and it is this core to his approach – whatever the genre – that becomes a model, not just for poetry, but also for life."

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David Miller & SpiritWork - Moments.

Stride Magazine: Moments of Transition

My latest poetry review for Stride Magazine is of Fukushima Dreams by Andrea Moorhead which:

'These are impressionistic and imagistic poems that in a few lines conjure a strange world of flight and stasis, of destruction and reconstruction, of fear and wonder. This collection aims to celebrate the spirit of Fukushima that absorbs and overcomes the tragedy of the March 2011 nuclear disaster and it builds on Andrea Moorhead’s longstanding concerns with the natural world and its degradation from multiple causes.'

My other reviews for Stride include a review of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, and a review of Temporary Archive: Poems by Women of Latin America. To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, and here. 

Stride magazine was founded in 1982. Since then it has had various incarnations, most recently in an online edition since the late 20th century. You can visit its earlier incarnation at http://stridemagazine.co.uk.

I have read the poetry featured in Stride and, in particular, the work of its editor Rupert Loydell over many years and was very pleased that Rupert gave a poetry reading when I was at St Stephen Walbrook.

Rupert Loydell is a poet, painter, editor and publisher, and senior lecturer in English with creative writing at Falmouth University. He is interested in the relationship of visual art and language, collaborative writing, sequences and series, as well as post-confessional narrative, experimental music and creative non-fiction.

He has edited Stride magazine for over 30 years, and was managing editor of Stride Books for 28 years. His poetry books include Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone (both published by Shearsman), and The Fantasy Kid (for children).

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Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Enola Gay.

Poem - The language of angels

My latest poem to be published by Stride Magazine is available from today. Entitled 'The language of angels,' it was written for Nicola Ravenscroft's series of 'in the language of angels' images.

For more on Stride click here, to read my other poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, and here, and to read a review written for Stride of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, click here. 

Stride magazine was founded in 1982. Since then it has had various incarnations, most recently in an online edition since the late 20th century. You can visit its earlier incarnation at http://stridemagazine.co.uk.

I have read the poetry featured in Stride and, in particular, the work of its editor Rupert Loydell over many years and was very pleased that Rupert gave a poetry reading when I was at St Stephen Walbrook.

Rupert Loydell is a poet, painter, editor and publisher, and senior lecturer in English with creative writing at Falmouth University. He is interested in the relationship of visual art and language, collaborative writing, sequences and series, as well as post-confessional narrative, experimental music and creative non-fiction.

He has edited Stride magazine for over 30 years, and was managing editor of Stride Books for 28 years. His poetry books include Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone (both published by Shearsman), and The Fantasy Kid (for children).

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John Tavener - Eternity's Sunrise.

Artlyst - Spiritual Joseph Beuys Plus More: September Diary

My latest diary piece for Artlyst has mentions of Joseph Beuys, Mathias Goeritz, Wallace Berman, David Miller, Idris Murphy, Colin McCahon, Yvette Coppersmith, Roger Kemp and Vasily Kandinsky:

‘Telushkin concludes by sharing a portion of a letter written by Kandinsky in 1913 where he “mused about the similar avenues of rupture and rebirth that religion and art offer”:

“Art in many respects resembles religion. Its development consists not of new discoveries that obliterate old truths and stamp them as false (as is apparently the case in science). Its development consists in moments of sudden illumination, resembling a flash of lightning, of explosions that burst in the sky like fireworks, scattering a whole ‘bouquet’ of different colored stars around them. This illumination reveals with blinding clarity new perspectives … the continuing growth of earlier wisdom, which is not canceled out by the latter, but remains living and productive as truth and as wisdom. Christ, in his own words, came not to overthrow the old law, [but] he transformed the old material law into his own spiritual law. In this way, I have since come to conceive of nonobjective painting not as a negation of all previous art. I have always been put out by assertions that I intended to overthrow the old tradition of such painting.”

Kandinsky’s argument regarding the synergies between developments in religion and those in art might just be a thread connecting all those artists and movements that have been considered in this piece.'

See here for my review of David Miller's 'Some Other Shadows'.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

• Grayson Perry Tapestries On Show At Salisbury Cathedral
• Sidney Nolan’s Africa: Interview With Andrew Turley
• Ilona Bossanyi: Tate’s Ervin Bossanyi Stained Glass Window Mothballed After 2011 Redevelopment
• Louis Carreon: Sampling Art History
• Modus Operandi - What Makes Successful Public Art: Vivien Lovell Interviewed
• Genesis Tramaine: A Queer Devotional Painter
• Lakwena Maciver: Review-Interview Hastings Contemporary
• Nicola Ravenscroft - Sculpture With A Peaceful Stillness
• Artist Hannah Rose Thomas – Tears of Gold – Interview
• Marcus Lyon: Human Atlas Explorations
• Elizabeth Kwant Interview
• Helaine Blumenfeld: Undulating Structures
• National Gallery Explores ‘Sin’ In New Exhibition – Interview Dr Joost Joustra Curator
• Betty Spackman: Posthumanism Debates
• Christopher Clack: Connecting The Material And Immaterial
• Peter Howson Artlyst Interview
• Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker On The Legacy Of ArtWay
• Alastair Gordon A Testament To His Faith
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar

Articles -

• Hidden Depths: The Woman in the Window – Dulwich Picture Gallery
• Holiday Snaps – End Of Summer Art Diary
• Heavenly Visions: Churches As Spaces For Contemporary Art
• In The Black Fantastic London’s Best Summer Exhibition
• Art Search: August 2022 Diary
• Re-imagining Essex July 2022 Diary
• Art Illuminating spirituality June 2022 Diary
• Hew Locke And The Christian Roots Of Carnival – Tate Britain
• Les Lalanne, Schütte And Gursky London Spring Exhibition Highlights
• Sensuous Sickert and Philpot Two Major UK Solo Exhibitions
• Venice To London May 2022 Diary
• Jacob Epstein, Louis Carreon, Titus Kaphar, Betty Spackman – April 2022 Diary
• Raphael The Human And Divine – National Gallery
• Damien Hirst The Visceral Reality Of Death
• Ali Cherri: Artist in Residence National Gallery
• Audrey Flack Carlo Crivelli And Robert Indiana – March Diary
• Surrealism Outside The Usual Story – Tate Modern
• Marcus Lyon Creates Fields of Vision At St Martin-in-the-Fields London
• My Art Diary And Other Thoughts February 2022
• Van Gogh Self Portraits The Infinite And The Ordinary
• Marvellous Icons: The London Jesuit Centre
• And On An Art Note: End Of Year Diary 2021
• Albrecht Dürer Travels Of A Renaissance Artist – National Gallery London
• Diasporan Identities: Life Between Islands Caribbean British Art – Tate Britain
• Isamu Noguchi: Socially Engaged Art – Barbican Centre
• Pablo Bronstein: A This-World Vision Of Hell
• Bosco Sodi: In The Beginning Of Wisdom
• George Condo Lockdown Works Hauser & Wirth
• Theaster Gates Clay As A Profound Metaphor
• Mark Rothko: Mesmerising And Intimate Works On Paper
• International Autumn Art Exhibition Reviews
• Roger Cecil: A Once In A Generation Welsh Painter
• Tino Sehgal: Location, Nature And Pandemic – Blenheim Palace
• Michael Armitage And The Power Of Art – Royal Academy
• Marie Raymond And Post-War Avant Garde Painting In Paris
• Rachel Kneebone: A Complex Tableau Of Organic And Geometric Forms
• Rodin: Suffering And Conflict – Tate Modern
• Barbara Hepworth: Symbols Of Art & Life – Hepworth Wakefield
• 20th Century Women Artists Challenging Conventions In Britain
• Chaiya Art Awards 2021 Gallery OXO
• Marc Chagall’s Exquisite Stained Glass Window Commissions
• George Gittoes Equal parts artist and warrior
• Keith Haring: Personal Spiritual Imagery
• Sean Scully: Philosophical Poetic Pastoral The 12 / Dark Windows
• Arthur Jafa: The Art Of Cutting And Pasting
• Blackpentecostal Breath: Spirit-Led Movement Jumps From Music To Visual Art
• Made in USA Ed Ruscha An American Perspective
• Robert Smithson: The Archetypal Nature Of Things
• If Jesus Is A Man Of Colour Why Did We Make Him Aryan?
• Cosmic Patches And Quilts Five Exhibitions
• Everyday Heroes: Southbank Exhibition Celebrates Low-paid Key Workers
• Entwining Spiritualism And Art – Three Shows
• Of Church And The Visual Arts
• Has The Word Master Reached Its Sell-By Date?
• The People Behind Community Is Kindness Billboard Campaign
• André Daughtry: Art, Rebellion And Racial Justice
• Salisbury Cathedral 800 Years Of Art And Spirit
• Home Alone Together Twenty Five Artists
• Botanical Mind Online: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree
• Salvador Dalí The Enigma of Faith
• Art And Faith A Time For Seeing
• Andy Warhol: Catholicism His Work, Faith And Legacy
• Kiki Smith: Embodied Art
• Art and Christianity Awards A Positive New Millennium Legacy
• Arnulf Rainer: 90th Birthday Exhibition Celebrated At Albertina Museum
• A Belonging Project And Exiles Loss and Displacement
• Robert Polidori: Fra Angelico Opus Operantis
• Art, Faith, Church Patronage and Modernity
• Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art
• Mat Collishaw Challenges Faith Perspectives With Ushaw Installation
• Waterloo Festival Launches At St. John’s Waterloo
• John Bellany Alan Davie Spiritual Joy and Magic
• RIFT Unites 17 Art and Science MA Graduates At Central St Martins
• Visionary Cities: Michael Takeo Magruder – British Library
• Van Gogh’s Religious Journey Around London
• William Congdon Holy Sites And The Kettle’s Yard Connection
• Mark Dean Premieres Pastiche Mass At Banqueting Hall Chelsea College of Arts
• John Kirby: The Torment
• Underlying The Civilised Facade
• Curating Spiritual Sensibilities In Changing Times
• Homeless Highlighted: New Beau Exhibition At St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Ken Currie: Protest Defeat And Victory
• Bosco Sodi: A Moment Of Genesis
• Bill Viola And The Art Of Contemplation
• Art In Churches 2018: Spiritual Combinations Explored
• Sister Wendy Beckett – A Reminiscence
• Guido Guidi: Per Strada Flowers Gallery London
• Peter Howson: The play is over – Flowers Gallery
• Camille Henrot: Scientific History And Creation Story Mash Up
• Nicola Green Explores Recent And Contemporary Religious Leaders – St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Art And The Consequences Of War Explored In Two Exhibitions
• Helaine Blumenfeld Translating Her Vision
• Sam Ivin: Physically Scratched Portraits Of Asylum Seekers Exhibited
• Sacred Noise: Explores Religion, Faith And Divinity
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• Michael Takeo Magruder: De / coding the Apocalypse – Panacea Museum
• Giorgio Griffa: The Golden Ratio And Inexplicable Knowledge
• Arabella Dorman Unveils New Installation At St James Church Piccadilly
• Can Art Transform Society?
• Art Awakening Humanity Conference Report
• Central St Martins in the Fields Design Then And Now
• The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art
• Polish Art In Britain: Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• Refugee Artists: Learning from The Lives Of Others
• The Religious Impulses Of Robert Rauschenberg
• The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement
• Artists Rebranding The Christmas Tree Tradition
• Art Impacted - A Radical Response To Radicalisation
• The Art of St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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David Miller and SpiritWORK - Voice.