Notes on Blindness, Geoffrey Hill & Ernest Mancoba

Mark Kermode writes of Notes on Blindness:

'Now this superb documentary by Peter Middleton and James Spinney dramatises the life-changing experiences of theology professor John Hull, whose audiotape diaries of his journey into blindness formed the basis of his 1990 book Touching the Rock. Building upon their 2014 Emmy award-winning short film, Middleton and Spinney have created an utterly immersive feature worthy of Hull’s end-quote declaration that “to gain our full humanity, blind people and sighted people need to see each other” ...

Maximising its accessibility, Notes on Blindness is available in audio-described and enhanced soundtrack versions, the latter transforming the film into a singular aural experience. (There’s also a virtual reality project, subtitled Into Darkness, currently touring UK venues.) John Hull died in July last year, but his spirit lives on in this extraordinary inclusive work, which is as educational, entertaining and inspirational as its subject.'

Peter Bradshaw writes that: 'The tone is sober, unflashy, and Hull’s reflections on God are presented without any hectoring or special pleading. Affecting and profoundly intelligent.'

The Guardian's obituary for Sir Geoffrey Hill contained the following:

'For the Unfallen ... remains a powerful book, astonishing as a young man’s debut; ornate, rhetorical, grandiose in its subjects and themes. Genesis, the very first poem, takes the creation myth as its own creative occasion, beginning: “Against the burly air I strode, / crying the miracles of God” and ending:

By blood we live, the hot, the cold,
To ravage and redeem the world,
There is no bloodless myth will hold.
And by Christ’s blood are men made
free
Though in close shrouds their bodies
lie
Under the rough pelt of the sea;
Though Earth has rolled beneath her
weight
The bones that cannot bear the light.

For the Unfallen, eventually published in 1959, and all Hill’s subsequent books, dwell on blood and religion; his treatments of violence range from Funeral Music (from King Log, 1968), a remarkable sequence on the astonishingly violent battles of the Wars of the Roses, to his careful and sensitive elegies for Holocaust victims. From his earliest poetry he was intensely interested in martyrs, whether of the religious controversies of the 16th and 17th centuries, or totalitarian regimes of the 20th; and he aimed at a scrupulous weighing of the appropriate words by which their witness could be mediated. By making historical atrocities more immediate, and refusing to abandon the memory of the dead, Hill was also tacitly calling attention to more contemporary political predicaments.'

Sean O’Toole writes on the life of Ernest Mancoba in the current edition of Tate etc. 'Mancoba, who left Africa to study art in Paris in 1938, infused modern European art with a unique African spirit. One of the founding members of the CoBrA group, his unique style is characterised by subtle colours, dynamic compositions and diffuse, enigmatic forms.' O'Toole acknowledges though the significance of Mancoba's Christian faith and the influence of his early arts training at the Christian school of Pietersburg, 'where in 1929 his Bantu Madonna created a scandal.' 'It showed her barefoot with African features, her hand making the gesture made by Bantu girls on nearing the head of the family. This break with tradition was not limited to iconography but extended by implication to the whole Christian world‐view as upheld in the West. Seven years later the Madonna was placed in the Anglican cathedral of St Mary in Johannesburg.'

Also in the same edition, Marco Pasi explores artists, from William Blake and Georgiana Houghton to Matt Mullican, who have been ‘guided’ by forces beyond their control.

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Geoffrey Hill - The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy.

Praise Songs - Jane Ulysses Grell

Jane Ulysses Grell is a storyteller, teacher, writer, and poet from Delices, Dominica, who is based in London. She holds a B.A. in French from Fordham University and a postgraduate diploma in French from Poitiers University. In the mid-eighties, she began working with oral storytelling to help boost children’s literacy, especially that of bilingual children, and since 1999, she has dedicated herself full-time to storytelling.

Jane is shortly to published her collected poems entitled Praise Songs. Her work represents "The music of words in the African-Caribbean oral tradition at its best."

Copies of Praise Songs can be ordered from janeugrell@hotmail.co.uk or from Central Books (centralbooks.co.uk) or from other good bookshops or Amazon. Papillote People’s Press £6.99 (ISBN 9780957118744).

The book will be launched at the Dominica High Commission (1 Collingham Gardens, London SW5 OHW - nearest tube, Earls Court, Earls Court Rd exit) from 6.30 - 8.00 pm on Friday 14th June. RSVP to janeugrell@hotmail.co.uk.

Jane can be heard reading poems from this collection prior to the launch at an evening of music and poetry to be held at Holy Trinity Hatfield Heath on Monday 27th May from 7.30pm. Jane will be joined for the evening by Mal Grosch (click here for details of his new collection of poems entitled Blackfriars), Jenny Houghton and myself (click here, here and here for book and meditation information) plus music from Colin Burns and the six churches.

This performance evening is part of the Arts Festival for the Barking Episcopal Area, an initiative which began in 2011 and involves quality events from a variety of Arts genre as a way of embracing and celebrating performing and visual arts and engaging with local communities, their people and arts culture. 

 

This year's Festival is being held in Harlow Deanery from 23rd - 27th May in parallel to the Heart 4 Harlow Festival. As in previous years, we have a very exciting programme including the premiere of Korban – a new play on the life of Christ; Art Talks (including Bishop Stephen on Stanley Spencer); art and photographic exhibitions, includingcommission4mission; Flower Festival (Hatfield Broad Oak); music and poetry evening (Holy Trinity Hatfield Heath); and Big Lunch and Community Praise, among other events. Click here to see more information and publicity. Click here for the Festival's Event page on facebook. Download the full programme for the Barking Episcopal Area Arts Festival by clicking here.

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Colin Burns - Linger Here.

Celebration of Poetry

Our ‘Celebration of Poetry’, as promised in our publicity, was a wonderfully varied evening of poetry supplemented by music and storytelling with both local and published poets performing their work. More photos of the event can be seen by clicking here.

To set the scene, and before reading a selection of my own poems, I quoted from Malcolm Guite's Faith, Hope and Poetry:

“Shakespeare set poetry the comparatively modest task of ‘holding a mirror up to nature’, that is, helping us to see our society and ourselves more clearly, reflecting our known realities back to us. But sometimes (and very often in the works of Shakespeare), the mirror of poetry does more than reflect what we have already seen. Sometimes that mirror becomes a window, a window into the mystery which is both in and beyond nature, a ‘casement opening on perilous seas’. From that window sometimes shines a more than earthly light that suddenly transforms, transfigures all the earthly things it falls upon. Through that window, when it is opened for us by the poet’s art, we catch a glimpse of that ‘Beauty always ancient always new’, who made and kindled our imagination in the beginning and whose love draws us beyond the world.”

Jane Grell gave us Caribbean poetry, storytelling, Moses poems and a Hopi Indian prayer/poem. Jane was born and grew up on the island of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean.  She started her teaching career in an all boys Comprehensive in Hackney, teaching French, before switching to teaching English to bilingual students in Waltham Forest. It was as a teacher of bilingual students that she discovered the power of storytelling. For her storytelling, Jane draws heavily from the African-Caribbean Oral Tradition of her childhood.  She has worked extensively as a poet and storyteller in teacher training establishments as well as primary and secondary schools in Britain. She was a teacher-secondee to BBC School Radio as an adviser on the multicultural content of its output.  While at the BBC, she also wrote and presented stories for schools' programmes. Jane has publications in Hawthorn Press, Scholastic and many poetry anthologies.

Malcolm Guite read work including 'My poetry is jamming your machine' and two of his O antiphons, before singing 'The Green Man' and 'Angels Unawares'. He ended with his recent iOde for his iPhone. Malcolm is a poet, a singer-songwriter, a priest, a chaplain, a teacher and an author. He plays in Cambridge rock band Mystery Train, and lectures widely in England and USA on poetry and theology. His collection of sonnets for the church year, Sounding the Seasons, is due to be published this December by Canterbury Press. Luci Shaw has said of him, ‘I recommend the work of Malcolm Guite, an English poet and Anglican priest who plumbs the depths of poetry and religious faith like a true metaphysical.’

Alan Hitching showed images of two pottery creations and shared the poems linked to these pieces. Alan is a poet, potter and priest. He says that poetry and pottery are like two languages for him. Words he has used all his life in poetry to express feelings and faith, the other language of clay he has only over the last 15 years since he was challenged to learn. Joy has come when the two languages speak on the same topic at the same time, expressing together his thoughts and feelings on subjects. 

Jenny Houghton gave us poems for each season. Jenny has been writing poetry since her teenage years, initially personal pieces. Then in response to an article in her church’s magazine in 1999, she submitted a short poem to a Christian publishing house, and was surprised but pleased when it was accepted for publication. Further submissions were regularly included in their poetry anthologies. Writing in a range of styles including verses, traditional rhyme and more abstract narrative, her work often includes wordplay and structural patterns. These occur instinctively as she has had no formal instruction in poetry composition. Her poems often reflect her Christian faith and she believes her ability is a true gift. Jenny first read one of her poems in public at a Good Friday service in 2011 but was initially concerned about sharing her work in this way. However her experience of performing in choirs, drama, dance, and creating craft work reminded her that no art form is truly complete without an audience to appreciate it!

Tim Cunningham gave us a selection of his poems, primarily drawn from his third collection entitled Kyrie. These are characterised by gentle humour and acute observation. Tim was born in Limerick in 1942 and has had a varied life history having worked for a brewery, in local government, with the National Coal Board and in education plus having lived in Limerick, Tipperary, Dublin, Trowbridge, London, Newark (Delaware), and, presently, Billericay. He has had four collections of his poetry published: Don Marcelino's Daughter (2001), Unequal Thirds (2006), Kyrie (2008), and most recently Seige, published to coincide with his 70^th birthday and consisting of a selection of visceral, roots poems taken from his three previous selections with a sprinkling of new work. Adrian Mitchell has written that, 'Tim Cunningham's poems are as various and fascinating as the animals in Noah's Ark. He has a most musical ear, a keen eye and an open heart. His aim is true. He writes beautiful poems.'

Thanks from Kathryn Robinson and I, as organisers, to all those who took part and to St Paul's Woodford Bridge for hosting us. 

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Van Morrison - Rave On John Donne.

CompassionArt & Deanery Youth Service

In January 2008 twelve of the best-known writers in the gospel/Christian music scene - Michael W. Smith, Darlene Zschech, Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Paul Baloche, Israel Houghton, Graham Kendrick, Steven Curtis-Chapman, Andy Park, Stu Garrard, Martin Smith – got together in Scotland to spend the week writing songs that could impact on issues of poverty in some of the poorest parts of the world on a long-term basis. They wanted to be people that can make a change rather than just singing about it.

As a result CompassionArt was born, a charity dedicated to seeing works of art generate income for the poorest of the poor. When we sing a song in church it actually makes money. A royalty is paid to CCLI – the global body that oversees the process. They take out a small percentage to cover their administration costs and then pass the remainder of the royalty on to the songwriter's publisher who take a cut themselves and then pass what remains to the writer of the song who then splits it with a management team. But everyone involved in these songs from writers to publishers, managers to the team at CCLI have waived all their rights and allowed CompassionArt to own the copyrights. So the songs that were written in Scotland are now owned by the charity meaning that every penny will come to it and the trust will own these copyrights forever.

Our young people at St Johns Seven Kings heard about CompassionArt during a Youth Group session about Christian music and decided that they wanted to base a Deanery Youth Service on its work and music. They have come up with some great ideas for leading prayer and worship and their service will be held at St John’s on Sunday 5th July at 5.00pm.

By supporting our young people and coming to this service you can help CompassionArt support projects restoring choice and hope to people's lives. CompassionArt is a charity that joins the dots between art and poverty. It raises money to help breathe life into the poorest communities, restoring hope and igniting justice.

They provide funding to projects working with children in Uganda – some of whom have already endured the brutality of life as a child soldier – as well as children of sex workers in Indian slums. There are homeless shelters in the middle of wealthy western cities and orphanages in the middle of developing nations that are helped financially - as a result of the sale of CompassionArt albums, songs and books - all of them breathing hope back into lives that have been conditioned to believe that life may never get any better.

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CompassionArt - Friend Of The Poor.