Image of the Invisible by Amy Scott Robinson and Freedom is Coming by Nick Baines

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I used these two “Advent” books in 2019 and didn’t get on that well with either of them.

The main problem is that neither of them actually fitted with the liturgical season. Freedom is Coming was arranged in weeks, starting on Sundays. Assuming you start your Advent reading on Advent Sunday then, depending on the year, Sunday of week 5 will at the very earliest be Christmas Day, but for me was 29^th December, yet Baines writes “As we approach the surprise of Christmas...” while a week later he reflects that “Advent allows us the space and time to resist the pressure to rush to Christmas...” - he seems to have resisted that temptation so successfully that Christmas has been and gone without him noticing. Image of the Invisible had dated reflections – so Scott Robinson does actually manage to notice Christmas Day but then on the Feast of Holy Innocent decides to reflect on God’s Kingship with not sense of irony or using God’s Kingship as counter to the false and brutal Kings and Rulers of this world.

Within them there were snippets of inspiration – but it felt they were hard won from the overall whole of either book.

A Quickening by Rosemary Hector

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This collection of reflective poems explore Christ’s birth narrative is a little gem.

Rosemary’s words are paired with illustrations by Kelsey Johnston – the same powerful simplicity.

Two of the poems…

If

If

she’s right

we’re found

If

God lit

the flame

that burned

then light

has won

and God

has come.

If

she’s right

then God

has come.

Genealogy I

Do we prefer not to read these lines?

The repetitive sons of,

names unpronounceable,

yet they give location, connection.

We need to go back, go back.

The birth was not random. The Story

didn’t start with the baby. Lineage, yes,

a family tree, but also whispered about

before and before; foretold. A prophecy.

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

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I hadn’t read any Terry Pratchett before, and I doubt I will be in any great rush to read any more…

However the idea this novel explores is interesting – that Gods get power from being believed in. In this case, despite the “Church” being powerful it has somehow stopped believing in its God – who as a result has been reduced from being almighty to being a tortoise.

It is an easy caricature of the Vatican, but we can probably see the same in most Churches, where the institutional power has become self-perpetuating and risks losing sight of the mission that comes from God.

A Poem for Every Night of the Year Edited by Allie Esiri

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This collection has a great range of poetic styles, and I think would be very accessible, and I like the habit these sort of book help form of regularly reading poems.

I will share just one of the poems... 

 

The Hurt Boy and the Birds by John Agard 

 

The hurt boy talked to the birds
and fed them the crumbs of his heart.
 
It was not easy to find the words
for secrets he hid under his skin.
The hurt boy spoke of a bully's fist
that made his face a bruised moon –
his spectacles stamped to ruin.
 
It was not easy to find the words
for things that nightly hissed
as if his pillow was a hideaway for creepy-crawlies –
the note sent to the girl he fancied
held high in mockery.
 
But the hurt boy talked to the birds
and their feathers gave him welcome –
 
Their wings taught him new ways to become.

We don’t know what we’re doing by Thomas Morris

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This is a powerful collection of short stories.

Set in Caerphilly, location is the thread that runs through them, small town tales, a place with a strong sense of itself but probably aware that the past was better than the future.

These are punchy stories – the characters are really well written, in the space of a couple of dozen pages you have fully invested in them as people. There is a theme of mental illness, depression and anxiety, which is maybe “on trend” for 2020, but as a collection published in 2015 represents a prophetic voice.

In some cases these issues felt a little close to home – I got the book at the end of 2017 and have read the stories every few months – they are powerful and therefore I don’t think this is a book to sit down and read cover to cover, you need time to let them settle and process before reading the next one.

The final story is a bit of a sci-fi, but like most of the best sci-fi it speaks to a completely contemporary issue – in this case the fact that we spend so much time on social media we fail to engage with the real world around us.

I will probably re-read this, which is the highest praise I can give, there are very few books I actually ever go back to…

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

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It is not easy to respond to this book, clearly I have to begin by accepting my own White privilege and watch myself to avoid the racial equivalent of “manplaining”.

The major point is that being “colour-blind” functions to uphold the status quo, as Reni puts it

“Not seeing race does little to deconstruct racist structures or materially improve the conditions which people of colour are subject to daily. In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative steretypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon – earned or not – because of their race, their class, and their gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system.”

Reni also notes that “I have to be honest with myself. When I write as an outsider, I am also an insider in so many ways. I am university-educated, able-bodied, and I speak and write in ways very similar to those I criticise. I walk and talk like them, and part of that is why I am taken seriously. As I write about shattering perspectives and disrupting faux objectivity, I have to remember that there are factors in my life that bolster my voice above others.”

Reni wrestles with intersectionality – different “minority” groups can find themselves in situations of competition, and for example as a women of colour Reni find herself challenged by some Feminists who want her to sign up to a universal female experience and refute any difference between women of colour and white women – the experience of people of colour within the LGBT+ community is an equally sorry story. (I put minority in speak-marks because of course women are not a numerically minority group, nor are people of colour once you look to a global scale).

One of the personal ‘take aways’ (if you will excuse that horrid phrase) from this book was the political/societal importance of coming out – Reni reflects on the ways that people make assumptions because as a women of colour they look at her and “see” someone “different” whereas as a white man people might not “see” my sexuality. It is possible, and often tempting, to operate in the closet – but allowing people to stay within their default hetronormative assumptions is in fact to collude with oppression.

The Forward Book of Poetry 2019

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Just two of the poems from this excellent collection...

The Quilt by Abigail Parry

The quilt’s a ragtag syzygy
of everything I’ve been or done,
a knotted spell in every seam,
the stuff that pricks and pulls. The quilt

began in ’96. I scrapped
the blotch batiks and brocatelles
each backward-bending paisley hook
that tied me to my town. The quilt

came with me when I packed and left
– a bad patch, that – you’ll see I’ve sewn
a worried blot of grey and black
to mark a bruisy year. The quilt

advances, in a shock campaign
through block-fluoresecent souvenirs
of seedy clubs and bad psi-trance
and peters out in blue. The quilt

came with me when I ditched the scene
and dressed myself as someone new
– or someone else, at any rate
and someone better, too – I felt

a charlatan in borrowed suits,
and flower prints, and pastel hues,
but things had turned respectable,
and so I stitched that in. The quilt

has tessellated all of it.
Arranged, like faithful paladins,
are half a dozen bits and scraps
from those who took a turn, then split –

the dapper one, the rugby fan,
the one who liked his gabardine,
the one who didn’t want to be another patch in your fucking quilt
but got there all the same. The quilt

is lined with all the bitter stuff
I couldn’t swallow at the time –
the lemon-yellow calico
I never wore again. The guilt

snuck into every thread of it
and chafed all through the honeymoon.
I scissored out the heart of it
and stitched it, fixed it, final, here –

with every other bright mistake
I wear, like anyone.

Something wonderful has happened it is called you by Emily Critchley

and mostly these days I just like to look

at you and sometimes make words

out of your name or rock you

in my arms till the thought of I

with or without poetry

no longer matters.

It’s not like I have forgotten

how to worry

about disappearing forests, landfill or the ozone layer

I pray that when you grow up there may still be

polar bears, for instance, forests and an ozone layer

keep the sun off yr precious face

and not just in the zoo

I worry about other things too, but mostly

it is hard to be unhappy these days especially

now the spring’s advancing and you’re learning

about hands – how to hold things in them

and take everything it’s yours