Arts Articles
Art thou in darkness?
Mind it not, for if thou doest it will fill thee more, but stand still and act not, and wait in patience till Light arises out of Darkness – James Nayler It was less of a walk than a stutter of feet edging across the floor as if she was navigating...
The Sybils Speak in Quaker Meeting
The last bird sang its black remembrance of earth at the bottom of our garden. One black bird perched on the edge of time a spindle twig quickened by May, its golden beak
Earth Day 22/04/19
Once we would have celebrated such a day. Now a poem would likelier be elegy than eclogue, Or, in music, requiem replace the anthem’s part. Nor can we with any confidence pray Earth rest in peace or light perpetual, While humanity remains to rend its heart.
Elegy for Spring
One day, when none recall how slowly leaves uncurl from buds’ bright stickiness,
I wish
For myself I wish… I would like some football boots, I would like some football boots, I would like some football boots and a gaming PC, PS4 keyboard and a mouse. I would like an Xbox, I’d like some more bedclothes I would like a Yorkie bar
‘I am witnessing, it seems, a Meeting for Worship stretched out over time.’
I am in a gathered silence but not in a Quaker Meeting, in a building that, in terms of ostentatious decoration, is ying to the Meeting house’s plain yang. The space – an Orthodox church in Bucharest – is empty save for a few people moving around with purpose. They cross...
‘Music and the Spirit is everywhere. I find it in the most surprising places.’
Damon Albarn is spelling out his Griot name to me. I’m having trouble with the letters, so he scribbles on my notes, then points to a gold band on his wrist, engraved ‘Makandjan Kamisokko’. ‘I was bestowed that [name] some years ago in a hut in Mali,’ he tells...
The children in Quaker Meeting
The children in Quaker Meeting are learning the different sorts of insulation: newspapers on the ground work for rough sleepers. Bubble-wrap pillows will lie on asphalt. For the lucky, it may be ewe’s wool in the attic, layer upon layer of lanolin blessing.
The poet, the prophet and the pilgrim
spirit guides their feet as they dance in a daze, in a haze waving their nets above untamed hair beach side, sea side
‘He might well be curious about the radically unfenced Quakerism of today.’
Here he is, this Sunday, in the doorway of the Meeting house. He is wearing his hat, the grey sombrero he kept on indoors in what people saw as the Quaker manner, and the clothes that led an admirer to describe him as the ‘Good Grey Poet’. Will we greet...