The Forward Book of Poetry 2021

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Three Poems that were highlights for me…

Sue Hyon Bae’s After the Threesome, They Both Take You Home provides a powerfully tender and honest account of the ordinariness that can sit alongside sex.

You can see it online at page 63 of https://issuu.com/apeironreview/docs/issue_12_final

Don Paterson’s Death is playful with a figure that haunts us, make you fellow sorry for the Grim Reaper!

Phoebe Stuckes’s Fox captures a young restless feeling “I am doing my best / with bad nights and bad love. / Honey it’s difficult.”

Living in Love & Faith Book

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This book sits within a wider process and it is difficult to separate one from the other, indeed it is probably unhelpful even to try to do so.

That process is not easy to engage with, but we need to hold onto the bigger picture, captured in this quote from p171 - “Eventually, in God’s time, there will only be love. Love is the only thing that lasts forever (1 Corinthians 13). We will find a love untainted by selfishness, unlimited by death and unsullied by unworthy wants and needs. Beyond the last day, when sorrow and sighing and pain are no more and God dwells among humankind, that love, finally and fully answering God’s love, will abide. Love will never pass away.”

In broad terms I think the book delivers on the task set for it, (which might not be the task some would have liked – it is not, and was never intended to be, a manifesto for change), the main message it provides is that you can via a set of reasonable, Anglican, assumptions about the nature of God, Scripture, and the World etc arrive at two opposing conclusions on human sexuality and gender identity. It rules out of court a few of the more extreme positions at either end but it sets a wide field on which the discernment of what is not only reasonable but also correct can play out. It also sets the scene for putting in place some arrangements for “two integrities” such as exist around women’s ordination.

The way it works through how positions are arrived at, essentially why we might believe, and do, what we do probably makes it a useful textbook for anyone wanting to understand the nature of belief across an wider gambit, the issues at hand can be taken as merely useful case studies for a methodology of unpack the different sources and the historical and contemporary influences on belief and practice.

But to say a little on the actual content, one of the challenges that the book shines a light on, and then side steps, is the complicated legacy of the Church’s evolving position on divorce.

This paragraph talking about the current position on remarriage after divorce can only explain that position by deploying a bit of a tongue twister

"The Church of England - where the conditions are right - allow clergy - where their consciences allow them - to solemnize the marriage of those who choose, with due regard to the past and full responsibility to the future, to marry again, and for their bishops to support them, praying to the God who is 'rich in mercy' (Ephesians 2.4): "Pour out your blessings upon [them] that may be joined in mutual love and companionship, in holiness and commitment to each other". In this way, the church seeks to witness to the biblical call for marriage to reflect God's 'covenant of life and well-being' (Malachi 2.5), to the challenges of human life known so well to the biblical writers, and to the God who, 'rich in mercy', is always ready to redeem and make new."

We maintain that marriage is a life-long and indissoluble union whilst dealing with the reality that it isn't. 

This is typical Anglican fudge, it allows the Bishops to maintain that there has been not change in doctrine, while at the same time accommodating pastoral practices that runs counter to that doctrine – and I assume this is sort of thing the Bishops hope they will be able to get away with as template for same-sex.

This twin track of logic goes all the way back to 1937 when the Bishops accepted that civil marriage and Church of England’s understanding were not co-determinant, but the consequence of being a National and Established Church left that view unresolved in practice – we are left wondering how many of the letters required between 1957 and 1982 to provide Parish Priests with explicit written permission before the baptism, confirmation, or admission to communion of those in a civil marriage with a former partner still living their Bishops actually wrote?

This provides a context where “pastoral practice” and “official position” have been at divergence for generations.

Thinking about letters leads me on to the requirement in the 2005 House of Bishops statement for clergy in Civil Partnerships to provide assurance of their celibacy, how many have actually been asked, and how many Bishops in effect told their clergy “I will assume your relationship conforms with Issues of Human Sexuality unless you do or say anything that absolutely forces me to acknowledge reality”.

And this made me reflect that there is something missing for the picture painted in the book, a that is the true extent that pastoral practice for LGBT+ people has in many parishes been at divergence from the official position – up and down the country LGBT+ people are busy within their churches, their relationships welcomed and affirmed, often without a second thought (by no means everywhere, but I think welcome is much more wide spread than rejection). The range of blessings on offer to same-sex couples are often difficult to distinguish from a marriage service, (and Bishops have seen and consented to such liturgies). And even in terms of ordination, same-sex relationships are much less of a barrier to ordination that the book might leave you thinking (I am not saying it is easy, it is complicated and compromising, but it is happening nevertheless – and despite their cowardice to speak publicly it is happening with the Bishops blessing).

It is a few weeks now since I read the book, and my unease about this absence is growing, because if the task of the book is to baseline the debate its failure to map the current landscape fully risks limiting the debate.

The book is accompanied by online “resources” which I have not listened to / watched in full but I am aware that there is a range of voices and experience included, and it may be felt that this covers these aspects I feel are missing, but if so that perhaps worries me more, if those experiences were identified for the online resources why didn’t they get into the book?

Finally, turning of another point, perhaps a bit of an aside, in part two during the review of the range of types of relationships they look at friendship, and say “...friendships can be picked up and let go of...” really? That feels like a rather impoverished understanding of friendship, I might say this of an acquaintance but not any friendship worth having, if someone can be “let go of” easily that would suggest they were never really a friend in the first place.

Kingdom Calling by The Faith and Order Commission

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This Report begins by recalling the various other reports and initiatives that the Church of England has published and undertaken, roughly every 10-15 years, since “Towards the Conversion of England” in 1945 and yet the challenge remains essentially the same, namely that in order for the Church to be effective it needs the whole People of God to be active in God’s Mission.

This is not really about enabling lay ministry within the Church – although there are plenty of internal benefits from doing that and we should continue to build on the progress that has been made in that direction – it is about the laity being equipped to live all aspects of their lives beyond the Church as instruments of Mission.

Therefore while the Faith and Order Commission has produced a perfectly good report the earlier reports were also more that adequate – it was the action, or lack of it, that came after that left the need unaddressed, and as such I am not sure there is any reason to conclude the response will be any different on this occasion. More likely, when in 10 to 15 years time the Church of England returns to this question this will just be added to the already long list of missed opportunities.

Reforming RE by Mark Chater

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The question “what is RE for?” is hardly new, nor is the need for robust answers. The failure to do “RE” well makes it an easy target for marginalisation by those that are uninterested in it or are actively anti its place within our education system.

Mark and the other contributors are honest about the current situation and refuse to make excuses for it – and the response they put forward is both attractive and has real potential to be effective, fingers cross they manage to get some meaningful implementation.

Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney

Out of print, but buy it from abebooks.co.uk

I found myself somewhat lost in the layers of this novel, the dual setting of the unreality of 1980s West Berlin and Chicago’s South Side and the rich cast of characters providing a lot to keep track on.

The way Jed’s identity as gay and Black plays with different ideas of respectability is central, and those around him are also wrestling to the identities they wish to have, the identities those that others give to them, and the gap between the two.

He begins with a rosy picture of gay bar ChiChi, but increasingly there is a darkness within the dynamics of its patrons – which often is the case if you scratch the surface of nostalgia for the tight knit gay spaces of the last century.

England by Marueen Duffy

Out of print, but buy it from abebooks.co.uk

Published in 2001 it is interesting to see some aspects which are of their time but actually Duffy has been successful in taking a long view as most of what she writes rings true now as well as it did then.

For those that worry that Brexit referendum campaign misled the British people there is little comfort here as the Myth of England that Duffy describes has Brexit weaved into its DNA, for example she notes on p103 that there is an “arrogance bred of this isolationist image… We would prefer to go it alone, even against all economic reason…” so if there were untruths used in the referendum they were ones the English mindset was preconditioned to want to believe.

We also find this in the reaction of many to the Scottish referendum within England, an attitude that I heard from many was essentially if Scotland wanted to be independent then good riddance to them – giving voice to a suppressed belief that England is burdened rather than enriched by the relationship, and the sense that expressing a desire for self-determination is essentially bad manners and ingratitude to the long suffering English parent.

Clearly she was writing just before “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters took other the world, as on p231 references the sentiment “Carrying on is itself a basic English stratagem, translated into wartime cliché as ‘pressing on regardless’...” without the biggest cliché of those particular posters – and fascinating window on the way they have being commercialised essentially as a simulacra.

The dogged carrying on is perhaps the appeal of Test match cricket as the batsman occupies the crease holding out for the draw.

The were some places where language felt a little dated, perhaps in retelling the racist tropes of our colonial past she would now make more explicit distance of her own views from them, and I felt that we ended up with a little too rosy a picture of Afro-Caribbean and Asian immigrant experiences in this country.

We also have a rather breathless conclusion, after millennium of history we get from the darkest days of WWII to the present in 20 pages – maybe it is the intervening 20 years that have put a significant additional distance, the War being 80 rather than 60 years behind us – increasingly it becomes the War Great-grandparents rather than Parents lived through, and so is remote from us. But the conclusion is also optimistic that we are about the break free of the Myth and become Europeans (newly connected by the Channel Tunnel which she mentions for more times that feels warranted) – whereas as things are turning out we have retrenched back into Myth.

And reading in the first days of our second COVID lockdown these words, on the penultimate page, felt weirdly prophetic… “will e-commerce catch on in a country where people are used to going out not merely to shop but to meet others, either by accident or design? Our perceived discontent will be greater if we become a nation of fearful stay-at-homes… Although we are the least touchy-feely of people, we still need social intercourse, we need to feel the village beyond our front door...”

Stephen by Carl Watkins (Penguin Monarchs)

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Again the Penguin Monarchs series provides great interest in a slim volume, in the long run of Henrys and Edwards with its smattering of Richards the name Stephen stands out – yet somehow I had a vague knowledge of the Empress Matilda and “the Anarchy” without setting it in the context of Stephen’s kingship.

The story of Stephen points to the way that the hereditary principle was rarely a straight jacket, and it seems as often as not the English crown passed on beyond the direct line. Also, particularly having just read Maureen Duffy’s England, it is a reminder that the “isolation” of England is a myth, the interplay with Wales and Scotland, but also France and the wider continent had a very intimate influence on the shaping of the “politics” of England.

I also found myself reflecting that the is a echo between Matilda and Mary Tudor – both had the challenge of acceptance as female rulers, but this was not helped by their husbands, the fear that Philip of Spain would naturally control his wife Mary Tudor and through her England is prefigured in the fear that Matilda would be beholden to her husband Geoffrey Plantagenet.

The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford

 

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Early in the book Rachel Anne tells us that “My Mother hates to have the island pulled about by visitors and tourists in the books they write.”, and we repeatedly have attention drawn to the islanders mixed emotions about the tourists, needed for money but resented for their fetishising of the islands “primitive charm”, which creates a tension as reader – how are either we or Gifford different from those tourists. There is a mystique around St Kilda – we might try to be enlightened observers – but I don’t think Gifford referencing the tourists as she does is sufficient to stop us falling into the same traps.

But within those constrains Gifford sets up a compelling love story – one which holds it power in separation for which its happy ever after ending is a little flat.

The Character of Virtue, Letters to a Godchild by Stanley Hauerwas

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I remain in two minds about this book…

The introduction by Sam Wells, in which he sings the praises of Stanley Hauerwas, feels like it is mostly there to remind us how clever Sam Wells is in selecting someone of the standing of Hauerwas to be Godfather. And there is something about the whole project that is an affectation – I none of the letter Stanley (as this feels like a collection that puts you on first name terms), Stanley notes that his wife has asked if he is writing the letter with the intension that they will be published – a question about who he was writing for – and you wonder how much of a say Laurie Wells had in the decision to publish “his” letters – it would all feel more authentic if they were being published by Laurie in later life having treasured them.

As the letters go on Laurie as a particular person being addressed begins to emerge, a little, and I think that helps to ground the collection. It also helps to give that sense of Stanley writing as an old man speaking to Laurie’s youth – that intergenerational dialogue is so rare, and it feels very precious.

There is also an unease that this is a conversation taking place very much in the context of privilege, something that Stanley acknowledges – but it doesn’t manage to break out of this.

These are nevertheless strong reflections as one would expect from Hauerwas. In the letter on Kindness I found these word stand out “To be kind is to know when not to speak because nothing can be said that is not false.” and the way he draws out kindness and constancy seemed to be the core for me.

And toward the end of the book, in the letter Faith, a longer quote (as it is not a book that offers up quotes easily – ideas are shared across the whole of a letter not a sound-bite)

“Which finally bring me back to the world you’re confronting in boarding school. Not too long ago, to be English and to be Christian were assumed to be pretty much the same. To ‘be of the Christian faith’ suggested a status rather than a virtue that was the result of habits acquired by undertaking an arduous task or journey. You didn’t need to be on a journey because it was assumed you had arrived. Happily, that world, the world in which being English and being Christian were assumed to be equivalent, is now gone. So to be the son of a mother who’s a bishop means you had better have faith in God because, in no doubt very different ways, God has found a way to make your life odd. I think you’ll discover that to be odd and to be a person of faith may be different ways of saying ‘I’m a Christian.’ But I think you’ll find nothing is more important than you ability to say ‘I have faith in God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit.’”

The Forward Book of Poetry 2017

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Some poems that particularly spoke to me…

Kathryn Maris “It was discovered that gut bacteria were responsible”

Ron Carey’s “Upstairs”, which concludes

“And she says nothing she says, nothing.

Leaving me, afraid

That everything might be said and done and said

And she has taken all the cold of the earth into herself.”

Kate Dempsey reads her poem “While it Lasted” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZfTLCnxhOg

Andy Fletcher “the atlas”

we used to read the atlas together

you said

‘an atlas can take you anywhere

the more you look the more you see’

you pointed at a river

a frontier

a peninsula i’d never heard of

sometimes you’d lean closer to the pages

and i’d feel your breath on my hand

occasionally we’d make a few notes

at some point

we must have closed the atlas

not realising

we wouldn’t open it again

the furthest you move now

is from one side of the bed to the other

a peninsula everyone knows about

as the nurse

writes on a sheet of paper in a file

your breathing is shallow and fast

and more i listen the more i hear

How not to be a Boy by Robert Webb

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A thought as a preamble … The copy I have from the library I have has a celebratory quote from J.K.Rowling front and centre of the cover, which given the ongoing outcry about her views on Trans people I guess the publisher might now reconsider. Since finishing the book, there has also been criticism for Robert Webb, who some time ago tweeted that the charity Mermaids “sucks”, but also more recently in an interview declined to distance himself from the tweet – none of which seems to fit with the underlying message I took from the book, ie that our current gender norms are essentially destructive. But it is also interesting that in their report of this Pink News referred to him as a Cambridge Educated Millionaire – this fact seemingly deployed to de-legitimise his ability to past comment - an awkward piece of inverted snobbery, being educated at Cambridge and/or a millionaire are not qualifications to speak on Trans issues, but neither would they, in themselves, appear to be disqualifications.

I have been putting off writing up this book as it touched more than one nerve, but it also it doesn’t seem to have settled. The narrative arc is one of poor boy made good, that Webb makes it to Cambridge, and then makes it as an actor and writers, is achieved against the odds – some the odds of circumstance and some, as he admits, self-inflicted. It is a beguiling tale in which Webb includes sufficient self-flagellation to remain a sympathetic character but there is a lingering unease that I can’t quiet place. Maybe just that it appears to be written in a moment of hope and contentment, but life doesn’t end come to such a tidy state, there is ebb and flow – where will the cycle go next?

The are two key themes, one about the ways insecurity, in general, plays out in counter-productive behaviours, and the other about the special role of the dysfunctions of masculinity play in that.

It is not a new reflection that “...if you’re especially frightened and insecure… then membership of the in-group is best secured by showing the maximum contempt for an out-group...” (p54) – this can be seen on the inter-personal and the geopolitical scale – talk of Reds under the Bed spoke more about America insecurities than it ever did about a Soviet threat. But it is interesting to get this rounded account of how that truth has been playing out in an individual’s life.

There were some points of common experience, such as our hair, and a nagging jealously of those with easy to manage hair, which will causally flop into place, meanwhile it is true for us that we could both say “I’ve lost my angelic curls, thanks God, but if I try to grow my hair long it just gets frizzy and big...” (p128). And also, those that I was at University with were amazed that I could go on a “night out” before an exam, as Webb says “I’m pretty sure I’m handling this exam pressure brilliantly by pretending to feel no such thing.” (p276) before recounted various physical manifestations of the stress which were familiar to me.

In many ways these could seem insignificant but are part of a wider picture of an undercurrent of insecurity. These then move from an undercurrent to an acute issue for him as a result of specific life events, most significantly the early death of his Mother – this book appears to be a major cathartic response to that.

Then turn to the dysfunctions of masculinity. He takes issue with “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, and the many other books of its like, as they exist “not to question the different expectations placed on men and women: they’re there to excuse and reinforce them, usually with a truckload of hokey metaphors and dodgy-looking science.” (p295). It is sad that as a culture we continue to embed gender stereotypes on children from their earliest moments, god-awful gender reveal parties being just the tip of a destructive iceberg. Where the stereotypes are challenged at all it is generally in terms to encouraging girls to aspire to “male-dominated” work roles – commendable as that is it we are not simultaneously empowering boys to aspire to “female-dominated” work roles the task will always remain incomplete. One of the things that I dislike about Strictly Come Dancing is the constant need for them to make Ore Oduba apologise for crying on the show – it might be wrapped in a light-hearted “banter” but the message remains clear real men don’t cry...

It may be a dip dip dip but it has real consequences – be it violence against women or the rates of young male suicide – as a society we need to be actively tackling this – it causes the isolation that many men experience - “Masculine insistence on competition and one-upmanship didn’t make a genuine friendship impossible, but, to put it mildly, that really didn’t help at all.” (p 86) – the protective power of friendship, the friend that can call out destructive behaviour, is too often absent.

Webb sums this up says “I promise I am not being wilfully dense about this. I don’t know what the words ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have to offer. Avoiding them, we still have a massive language… [which can describe people without being] … pre-loaded with a steam tanker of gender manure from the last century.” (p87)

He is self-critical for his own tendency to be drawn in to social media point scoring – which probably brings us round to the preamble again - in the polarised world of social media, we are increasingly encouraged to think of them and us, you are either right or wrong, a good person or a bad, the shade of grey, the complex, the nuance is denied. Reflecting on his relationship with his Father, how far their lives and their views diverged, but the love that held them together he sees it as a “kind of forced empathy that villages, not just families, are rather good at.” (p308) – throw together you have to get along, get over the difference – you can’t retreat to the echo chamber.

He also reflects, uncomfortably, about his drinking – while I was reading this that was a mirror held up too close to home.

To end a poem written by his wife, Abbie

Wedding Day

This, they say, is the best it gets -

this glorious day, so let’s

have this glorious day and kiss Goodnight,

and wake up hungover and fight.

And make up and kiss Goodnight,

and wake up and make jokes:

some good, and make plans

and kiss Goodnight and sleep

and hold hands.

And wake up and insist and be wrong

and laugh like monkeys, without understanding, and be right.

And then let’s kiss

and kiss

and kiss

and kiss

and kiss

and kiss Goodnight,

and sleep

and keep each other warm

and wake up

and take up each other’s cause

and forsake all others, for as long as the light lasts.

And then let’s kiss our last Goodnight

And oh! Christ let me dream of your sweet face then.

Tigerman by Nick Harkaway

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Harkaway provides a complex context for this story, the island of Mancreu, with its environmental damage and international governance arrangements – and it felt to me that there was too much going on – you were being pushed to suspend disbelief in too many directions at once.

Within this is placed Lester Ferris and “the Boy” - characters that are a bit clunky but there is a humanity about then which you can warm to. While around them is a cast of cardboard cut out clichés.

I will try to avoid spoilers, but I found the ending completely unsatisfactory – you get to page 344 out of 372 and the identity of “Bad Jack” is revealed and it makes no sense (even in the midst of the barely plausible wider narrative…).

I think it would have been a better book if it had been stripped back, a lot the goepolitical complexity was just noise, the bonding of Lester and “the Boy” was where the interest was, and in that relationship was the spark that drew the washed up Lester out of himself and allowed him to become his best self – that would have made a sharp novella which sadly got lost in this somewhat flabby novel.

Anointing in Worship by Charles Read and Phillip Tovey

I don’t normally write up  Grove Booklets but this one rang some bells the felt particularly worthy of comment (or maybe an excuse to go off, simultaneously, on a tangent and on a rant).

I got the sense that Read and Tovey might be coming at the issue from the other end of the candle from me, but I think we reach similar conclusions on the issue of use of oil and anointing. Basically, in the words of the great liturgical thinker Len Goodman, “too much messing about”.

How times have, suddenly, changed –this was published in May 2020 so written, I assume, pre-COVID, but what will be the liturgical role of touch be now Bishops have to anti-bac their hands before, and after, laying them on anyone?

To paraphrase - the argument Read and Tovey advance is: 1) there is no clear Biblical or Patristic precedent for anointing with oil, and even when there is evidence that it happened the meaning attached to it is not articulated. 2) Medieval practice institutionalised the practice but within the context of wider muddling of what was important – what I might characterise as liturgy as “magic spell” rather than “mystery”. 3) Anointing went at the Reformation in the general cull of all but the “essential” – although unlike some practices it went without much debate about what was either good or bad about it. 4) It was then absence from Church of England practice for centuries until seeming to come from nowhere in the second half of Twentieth Century, and we now busily anoint anyone who moves, as well as anyone who stands still (or lies on sick bed) too long.

A lot of this links to questions about the purpose of Maundy Thursday Chrism Masses – which seem to somehow have become focal point for some of the worse tendencies towards egotistical clericalism within the Church of England (the Vicar goes to be reaffirmed that ordination did actually make them special, and to collect the magic oils blessed by the most holy Bishop, which they will administer to their wretched Parishioners as and when they determine them deserving) but lets unpack that gross simplification another time...

The most telling comment comes in an anecdote about new Vicar questioning being anointed during their induction as an echo of the anointing they had received at their ordination, because they had not, in fact, been anointed at ordination so how could there be an echo. The Rural Dean’s response was “that it did not matter if it was lacking in meaning as it was, in any case, a nice thing to do.”

I think this is indicative of a wider malaise we often encounter within the CofE, especially among its Clergy, that involves going through the motions because it is a “nice thing to do” rather than engaging with the sacraments as life changing, world changing, actions. The Church of England lives under the tyranny of being “nice”, but also has a problem with not really believing in God.

During COVID the way restrictions have been applied to the Church shows us that within the thinking of Government, and the Civil Service, the Church is seen as a very useful charitable body with a great track record of delivering community support, especially in hard to reach places, while Church Services are essentially just entertainment. I don’t think those are actually unreasonable lens secular decision makers to view the Church through, but it does worry me that the Church’s own response might suggest our Bishops see the Church in much the same way.

I characterise myself as a Charismatic Catholic – and the key reason for that is the belief that our actions have meaning, and have consequence – we live in a world where there are signs and wonders, and they have power. To do something meaningless because it is “nice” doesn’t make at lot of sense to me – this is not just about theology, it is also learning styles / personality types and which ever test it is I am always in the bit of the grid / circle that tends towards telling the people the truth rather than telling them what tell would like to hear, Benthamite Calculus that prefers a nice falsehood over an uncomfortable truth has never been for me…

I have no dogmatic objection to anointing, and I think it has the potential to be used powerfully, but if done it needs to be done with purpose and intention – there must be some sort of answer to the question “what difference did that just make?” As I get older I worry less about doctrinal precision, and it has never exactly been my greatest worry, we don’t have to be certain about the mechanics of the Grace received in a sacramental action but we need to believe that something happened, or what is the point?

You Are Ready! By Eric Carle

can be found on Abe 

I am charmed by this most recent book from Eric Carle – my copy arrived at a moment in the COVID situation when we were about to get some easing of lockdown, so the subtitle “The World Is Waiting” felt like it captured the Zeitgeist – but in the weeks that followed it seems the World will have to wait a little longer.

I love Eric Carle but I am not sure about books like this, there is no story arch, the images are his greatest hits – they are strong but we have seen them before – and I worry this is the product of the corporate machine rather than the artistic talent.

But then I love the words, they are so sharp, if the corporate machine produced this I guess I underestimate its capabilities?

No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg

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This is an attractive book, the speeches at mostly 3 or 4 pages long, with plenty of pictures in between.

As Greta has travelled she has, in essence, been making the same speech, the same point. Therefore as a collection one might feel it is repetitive – but that this is probably a grossly myopic comment – this is not a retrospective collection of speeches given over a lifetime it is published as part of ongoing active campaign.

I think I have been long aware of need to act to counter climate change so I was surprised that even for me these were a bit of a sucker punch. I probably talk the talk but do I really walk the walk on changing lifestyle in the interests of the climate? The power of her direct address making it very hard to pretend that she is talking to “other people” - Greta is looking you in the eye and asking what the hell you are doing?

How will COVID change this conversation? With politicians lining up to be “guided by the science” there is an opportunity to hold them to account to place equal weight on the climate science. And the ability for populations to accept massive shifts in working patterns and behaviours can also be played back – the quickest way to cut the carbon footprint of your daily commute is to work from home! It will be interesting to see how that plays out, and for the sake of the planet I hope it plays out well.

Why does God care who I sleep with? By Sam Allberry

This was reviewed in Church Times and being aware that Sam Allberry, as a Gay Man and a member of General Synod, currently has a significant influence on the thinking of the Church of England (through his advocacy of celibacy as the only proper Christian path for those that are, as he calls it, same-sex attracted) I wanted to take the opportunity to hear how he gets to that point of view.

I tried to come to this book with an open-mind – to consider Sam’s argument on its own merits – I think it is important to affirm that fact that Christianity is big enough to reach different conclusions from valid positions of integrity - and I am actually disappointed that I found it rather incoherent. I put my hand up, it is unlikely that I would ever come to agree with his conclusions but I could accept respecting them as reasonable alternatives.

Sam uses the age old rhetorical technical of first presenting a straw-man position and then successfully countering it with the presentation of his own position. If you want to win an argument it is generally easiest to set the terms of both sides of it.

He sets out a number of damaging expressions of sexuality – incest and paedophilia, rape and sexual abuse, the sexual commodification of people through porn and prostitution. It is not difficult to demonstrate that Sex that is driven by greed and selfish gratification, rather than any care for the other person, is destructive.

All of that I completely agree with – but the next step for Sam is to say that the only context where these destructive tendencies are avoided is mixed-sex marriage. Although this book is not particular thinking about same-sex relationships there is a clear sub-text in the way the argument is structured.

Firstly we get an idealised version of marriage – which is part of the conclusion that marital sex is inherently life affirming. Sam ignores any disconnect between what marriage “is meant to be” and what are often actually is. Never having been married I know nothing of the sunlit uplands of marital sex but I have had some wonderful life affirming sex, as well as some encounters I regret deeply, maybe I am lucky but from what I hear is good and bad sex are likely in equal measure within marriage as they are outside.

There is some worrying blurring of ideas of consent within marriage – although he states that “Paul would only countenance couples abstaining from sex by mutual consent, and the same is true of having sex too.” This doesn’t seem to be what the various quotes from Paul actually say, and it does not make sense – if you need mutual consent to abstain, then the logical conclusion is that you don’t need mutual consent to have sex. This seems to run significant risks of condoning marital rape. And these passages made me very uneasy.

He also seems to tie himself in a few knots by making marriage and sex primarily about procreation, in order to exclude same-sex couples from all the life-affirming things he says about it.

That marriage, at its best, is a great context to in which for children to grow up is a valid conclusion. However, to say that children conceived in any other context are disadvantaged doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny. But more importantly, to say that sex that is not open to the conception of children is somehow impaired raises so many questions that go unanswered – this would seem to align to the “traditional” Roman Catholic position and so I would have to infer that Sam Allberry would advocate against contraception.

Also starting with Adam and Eve (who we might conclude co-habited without any formal marriage ceremony) there is a narrative about the need for male and female to come together to make a successful relationship. This is expressed in terms of “equal but different” - that there is something distinctly different between any particular man and particular any women – and these two form a two part jigsaw that fit together as a whole. This also means you have to see an overwhelming commonality in the contributions that ever man and ever women can bring to a relationship, the jigsaw would seem to be endlessly interchangable? We could spin the wheel and have a different Husband and it would have not material impact on the quality of the relationship…

Among the other problems, despite being a single man himself, this position seems to make it hard to value singleness as a potentially valid and rich life. And leaves Sam stuck in the 1980s asking a gay male couple “who is the wife?” and lesbians “who takes the bins out?”.

And then he gets to the Woman at the Well, and I had to write in the margin “wow, he really is going there...” It you are trying to make the case for marriage being an unrelentingly positive experience it would probably be best to side step the case of a Women who has had 5 husbands, and in now in an relationship with a man who is not her husband. 5 times wonderful? Although I don’t think the text says how the 5 marriages ended, some of the husbands might have died, Sam is confident they all divorced her – in under the laws at the time husbands could divorce their wives but not vice versa. For 5 men to reject her, Sam sees a common factor - her, “she was also too much for them.”

Up until this point I had found it a weak and ineffective attempt to prop up outdated views, and in some ways been comforted that Sam didn’t seem to be able to access better arguments. But then this moment of victim shaming really pissed me off, and reminded me how toxic some who speak in the name of Christ are… My jaw dropped, I was angry, and I felt myself jumping up from my seat to get between San and the Woman to say “you shut up now” - if the situation was real would I be so bold?

I am Nobody’s Nigger by Dean Atta

Out of print but can be found on Abe 

after reading Pink Flamingo I had to read this Dean’s other published work.

To have poems about gay sex, unambiguously about sex is delightful – even when the feelings are complicated – not all the sex is good, not all of it is life affirming – but it is spoken about with honesty – we are given access to truth.

One poem…

More than this

I knew, before we’d even spoken

My skinny-jean-clad punk-rock poet

Tattooed and pierced

Painted and punctured

Denim, metal and ink

Pint glass in one hand

Poem in the other

Mouthfuls of beer dislodge illicit imagery

And forbidden metaphors

Crumpled A4 sheet casually discarded

As the last lyrics leave his lips

He leaves me naked

On a tobacco and cannabis speckled rug

On his living-room floor

Wrapped up in a blanket, damp with semen, lubricant

And the cold tea we spilled in our frantic lovemaking

‘I’ve got to go to work,’ he says’ ‘You can let yourself out.’

I guess it’s nice to know I can get what I want

But maybe I should want more than this.

Sheepshagger by Niall Griffiths

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If I had to sum this up in one word it would be “bleak”, if you gave me two words it would be “unrelentingly bleak”.

The dislocation from society of the rural poor can become a bit of a tired trope but it is expressed here with such gut-wretching authenticity that it is fresh.

The violence is told without blinking – this is not pantomime violence it is horrible. And there is a building sense of doom – there is not redemption on offer here.

All this comes together to make this a must read...

Refuge and Renewal Migration and British Art by Peter Wakelin

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This book, and the exhibition it accompanied, highlights the important positive contribution immigrants have made, and continue to make, to our national life. We need to celebrate anything that helps the counter-narrative to wave of reactionary anti-immigration rhetoric that currently dominants our public discourse.

Taking a long view, beginning with Huguenots, noting a less than impressive welcome Monet and his compatriots, and asking awkward questions about our self-congratulation for the Kindertransport and forgetfulness of the adult Jews who were denied entry, it builds to the big question mark against our current attitudes and policies.

We have been enriched by people we have made it bloody difficult to come, to be accepted, and then quietly co-opted their success as our own.

This was an uncomfortable read.

Seeing God in Art by Richard Harris

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I was a little disappointed in this book if I am honest.

The 30 images are an interesting selection, albeit not really taking us beyond the Western tradition.

But I found the reflections somewhat pedestrian and what really frustrated me is that most didn’t really respond to the actual image – maybe a reflection on the Biblical event depicted but not a reflection on this particular depiction.

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

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I read this wonderful book in a day, there is an energy about it that draws you on. Typeset in short lines even the prose has a poetry to it. It put me in mind of Bernardine Evaristo – and not just because she also explores people of colour’s experience of sexuality, it also shared some of the energy of Hello Mum – Atta stands up favourably as a writer against the award-winning Evaristo in my mind.

It is a coming of age and a coming out tale, in which Michael finds freedom in his drag persona The Black Flamingo, as one of the poems interspersed within the narrative says:

“…

When it’s time to go on stage,

know that you’re not ready but

this is not about being ready,

it’s not even about being fierce

or fearless, it’s about being free.

...”

The power of the drag persona is celebrated – it is not there for cheap laughs, when asked who is The Black Flamingo Michael responses

“He is me, who I have been,

who I am, who I hope to become.

Someone fabulous, wild and strong.

With or without a costume on.”

Although a positive tale running through it there is an edge of realism and grit

“I come from being given permission

to dream but choosing to wake up

instead.”

But it also provides a great image of simple delight

“I remember the ‘sandcastles’

Anna and I built

on our day trip to Brighton,

how she didn’t care there were pebbles

and not sandcastle

but how on the journey

I was so fearful

that she was going to cry

when we got there,

that she would only be happy

with sand

but she didn’t mind

that her ‘sandcastles’

didn’t stay

in the shape of the bucket:

she was perfectly happy to play

with pebbles

and call it a sandcastle

anyway.”

It also has that hint of the question, when do we tell ourselves we are inadequate pebbles?, that we will cause people to cry when they find out we are not sand – forgive me for explaining the metaphor, but having ripped it a bit out of context it feels like you might need a signpost.

He talks of the room where the University Drag Society meets

“I feel safe in this room

with my new drag family;

I carry this room with me

for the rest of the week.

This room has many other

functions to other people,

just another room in the

Students’ Union building,

but when we meet here,

it’s a place without there.”

This is the exact feeling I have for the Vane Tempest in Dunelm House, where the LGBT Association used to have its weekly social – the description on the Students’ Union website doesn’t give any hint of how it was for a couple of hours or so on a Monday night a sacred space – where friendship and liberation were found that could sustain you through the rest of the week.

I feel I need to acknowledge the sort of obvious point that the eponymous Flamingo is Black – or I would risk editing that critical element of the story, or engage in some kind of cultural appropriation by claiming it could speak to my very “white” self. I am cautious to speak too much on this aspect which is removed from my own lived experience. But I will note that to be queer is a challenge to traditional conceptions of masculinity, and the, sometimes problematic, conceptions of “black” masculinity seem to come under particular challenge when the “queer” in question is also “black”. Atta unpacks the complexity of identity with skill – Michael’s biological father might fit a caricature of absence male role model, but his Uncle is clearly identified as the positive opposite to everything his father isn’t. Some of us will behave in ways that fit a stereotype but that does not validate the type. I read this with a feeling of closeness to parts of Michael’s experience, but nevertheless in the full knowledge that my white, male, and middle class privilege in almost all cases more than compensates for any disadvantage being queer might bring.

Is it a book that changed me? It sits alongside Hide by Matthew Griffin and Until Our Blood is Dry by Kit Habianic for the emotional punch it delivered, books that continue to churn in my mind, years after I read the last page they are fresh in my mind.

The Forward Book of Poetry 2020

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From Shahidha Bari’s Forword…

“...poems are not just heard but felt in the shape of the words formed on our mouths, understood resonantly deep within, too.

We are all poetry people. You read the right line at the right moment and suddenly the world is illuminated with a different light. If you are searching for that line, we have confidence that you will find it. And if you ever doubted that poetry is for you, know that it takes just one poem to turn a reader into a lifelong poetry person...”

A couple of the poems I particularly liked

Liz Berry Highbury Park

https://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/poetry/highbury-park/

RA Villanueva Namesake

https://twitter.com/caesura/status/995344514163314689

The Nearer You Stand by Roger Wagner

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Roger Wagner is a poet and an artist, and while the pairing of artworks and poetry might be fairly common to have pairings from the same author adds an extra dimension.

I probably engaged more with the images than the words – he is a skilled painter of trees, but he also takes scenes from scripture given us new images that free us from the traditional, often twee Victorian, images that might come first into our minds.

He has some of the images on his website, but the picture quality there is does not really do justice to them

A common character is the setting of the scene in front of an industrial landscape – although many of the locations in scripture are “rural” it would have been understood as a working landscape and so it is helpful to point us to that rather than our increasingly romanticised rural idle

https://www.rogerwagner.co.uk/work/item/54/walking-on-water-iii-2005

There is also a luminosity to many of the images – a hint of the radiance of the glory of god perhaps?

https://www.rogerwagner.co.uk/work/item/14/1984

Fantastic Man Buttoned-Up edited by Gert Jonkers & Jop van Bennekom

Out of print but can be found on Amazon 

Another of the Penguin series published alongside the London Underground 150^th Anniversary, this one taking a left-field look from that theme.

It explores the meaning of the fashion, common in parts of East London, of wearing the top button of short done up without a tie. This seems like a mirco-topic but turns of to be a rich seam – there is something about restrain and self-control that is expressed by that button – the absence of the tie grabs the attention more that its presence would. Those featured are all white, it is a style that comes form the white-working class neighbourhoods of East London – and there are complexities as the assumptions of masculinity have shifted, in part as work has shifted away from physical labour.

Gor Saga by Maureen Duffy

Out of print but can be found on Amazon 

First published in 1981 this near future dystopia imagines a range of technology that are now common place – Kindle-style e-readers, self-service check-out, 3D printing, self-driving cars, data / records that accessible across a dispersed network, video calls from mobile devices – I found it interesting how these are mostly mentioned as asides yet seem to have matched the progress in the last 40 years so well, and this added to vivid narrative.

As automation has eliminated a wide range of jobs society has been sharply divided, along the lines of the 11+, between “people of status” and “nons”. The life of the people of status continues largely untouched but eased by the advances in technology while the quality of life of the “nons” has regressed. This divide is policed, with central records of peoples life determining which side of the line they will live – with peoples capabilities, and therefore worth, been viewed as essentially hereditary.

Into this world Gor, the “product of a gorilla ovum and human sperm”, is born. The disregard of Forrester for the primates that he experiments is closely linked to a societal disregard for the “nons” as sub-human. The treatment of Gor, wrenched repeatedly from care-givers, is harrowing. That his capabilities and worth transcend his origin points to the larger error is these divisions in society.

Although the story told is obviously writ-large there are some points of the touch very close to contemporary home – the division between the “people of status” and the “nons” might be extreme compared with the inequalities within England today (albeit these are very real) they are probably akin to the relative experiences of the western consumer and the sweatshop worker in Bangladesh, and a lot of the narratives around immigration play of the status and entitlement of British citizens and the lack it on the part of those seeking to move here.

This is a book that doesn’t deserve to be out of print...

Great British Railways: 50 Things to See & Do by Vicki Pipe with Geoff Marshall

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This is a great book to pop in bag and read on the train, or like me read on the sofa during lockdown.

The facts they share and ideas of things to do are interesting in themselves, but also are the prompt to a wider attitude of curiosity about the world around us. If we really look around us there is so much to see, even in “ordinary” places – even asking us why the street has that name begins to open up and enrich our experience.

Sound Archive by Nerys Williams

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One of the peoms

The Dead Zoo, Dublin

for John Peel

1

In the dead zoo we walk an afternoon

touching the giraffe with a sutured stomach

and the bull seal with a broken ear.

The gazelles too are thinking

about the jungle kings, sun-kissed and light-bleached

making a performance of their anger.

All hips and grimaces the hyenas

pass silent commentary on our clothes.

And I remember finding the bat in daylight

on the schoolyard wall, its cape and hooks

trembling, broken by the colourwash of light,

it hated being stroked.

We had a bat funeral, a ceremony that summer

which followed other rituals:

wreath laying for road kill, bouquets for robins

and elegies for tame jackdaws.

Strange to find oneself here with these exhibitionists

teasing us that they are alive still.

2

Music is a skin,

notes at the tips of my fingers

fingertips at the edge of my songs.

After the elegies and the websites

after the obituaries and the radio stories

after the musicians and the brouhaha

there was nothing left but teenage kicks.

3

So I take you to the dead zoo

your own private Gethsemane

to curate the animals into action

4

I will use your words against mine with mine and on mine,

I will play all your records at the same time

the unreleased singles and demos

causing cacophony on the dance floors.

Rhythm is a bright confusion

I will say that music is homesickness

And you can give me your unheimlich

as an elegy of recognition.

The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons: Decoding the Ancestry of the English by Jean Manco

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The term “Anglo-Saxon” is increasingly contested, and often see as closely aligned to racial prejudice therefore Manco twin approach of exploring linguistic and genetic origins of the peoples that are often referred to as “Anglo-Saxon” should have been more rewarding than I feel this book is.

It is difficult to see who the intended audience really is – it is written as a text book, each chapter ends with a summary page of bullet points, and it is probably too dry for most general readers, but at 200 small pages, full of maps and images it is unlikely to provide the depth of any academic reader would need.

It also feels like it never manages to draw the insights of different perspectives and evidence together to tell a story that is bigger than the sum of its part – disconnected elements are just piled on top of each other.

One point of interest was that the period we sometimes call the Dark Ages is also known as “Völkerwanderung” - the era of wandering of the people.

One by One by Penelope Gilliatt

Out of print but can be found on Amazon 

One by One is a dark and troubling tale. As its backdrop is an epidemic disease there is a particular resonance to reading during COVID-19 lockdown – but it is also a tale about media manipulation which in the 5 or so decades since its publication have also intensified making it seem to really speak to our moment. A few spoilers follow.

As Joe and Polly have to be physically separated to protect her from the risk of infection while he works with victims in hospital her pain at the lack of touch will be familiar to many in these days, but it over laid by Joe’s emotional distancing from her. It leads to the dark reflection “That it’s selfish to clutch at people and clutter them like this when the truth is that we’re on our own. Everyone dies his own death. No one else can do it for you.” Maybe no one can do it for you, but that doesn’t mean that you must face it alone.

Joe, a vet volunteering in the hospital, is picked up by a newspaper that builds a story of him as a hero until a rival paper (possibly after a tip off by Joe’s own mother) runs story of his youthful arrest for a homosexual encounter. In a mid-sxities context this is a scandal that crushes him to the point of suicide – while our attitudes to sexuality have changed the ways that people become the play things of the media and flip from hero to scandal are very much with us.

There is no hopeful resolution to the narrative – and the themes of the failing of relationships and society run on and we can still find them all around us.

Percy A Story of 1918 by Peter Doyle, Illustrations by Tim Godden

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With so many books about the First World War written this nevertheless stands out.

Based on a collection of letters, fragments of the story, within the grand narratives of the War this is the story of one individual, Percy, and there is a power that touches you in that personal, particular, encounter in ways that the overwhelming weight of numbers sometimes fails to do.

That Percy is not called up until near the end of the war means that it is also an account of the “home front” - there ways in which live carried on – some parts largely as normal. It recalls Percy’s period of training, often overlooking as the focus gets grabbed by the horror at the front.

To tell the tale of an unremarkable solider is an important memorial, not only to Percy but to all those whose lives have been used up by war unnoticed beyond their own home and family.

Eric and Scrunchball by James and Alice Reynolds

Out of print but can be found on Amazon 

There is a deep charm to this picture book telling the true story of the separation of Eric and his Scottie Dog when Eric went to serve as an Army Chaplain, and was taken prisoner at the fall of Singapore.

It is the tale of Scrunchball (real name Tim) the dog waiting for Eric’s return – it is a one level a very simple tale, but there is a poignancy in the waiting which comes from the contrast with the joyful illustrations of the cheeky Scrunchball. A window on the pain of separation for men and women waiting for loved ones that have gone to war, the grieve of those for whom the wait was in vain as they would not return.

It is good that there are picture books such as this helping us to tell big stories to children.