Author Archives: Matthew Pullar

Communion (For Saints, Martyrs, Missionaries and Teachers of the Anglican Communion)

The stories are told of the many who died; Some of them rest in the Abbey. The bricks there stand firm over hundreds of years; But some stories fade with the passing. The pillars still hold but the truth, sometimes shaky, Whispers and shudders through ages, For the towers we built and the books thatContinue reading “Communion (For Saints, Martyrs, Missionaries and Teachers of the Anglican Communion)”

Experiments in Form Part 4: Playing with the Sonnet

One of the interesting results of playing with form is that the nature and structure of the form begins to dictate, or at least direct, some of where the poem goes. This makes it a great creative exercise: you may not know what to write, but once you begin, the form starts to help shapeContinue reading “Experiments in Form Part 4: Playing with the Sonnet”

Experiments in Form Part 4: Rolling

The second of the two poetic feet, the trochee, is much less common than the iambic foot. Iambic meter is more like regular speech; trochaic meter is much stronger, more emphatic. It means “rolling”, and you can see why. The stress should naturally fall on the first of every pair of beats, and creates aContinue reading “Experiments in Form Part 4: Rolling”

Experiments in Form Part 3: The Spenserian Sonnet

Of the three major sonnet forms, I have found the Spenserian to be the nicest to write in. Like the Petrarchan sonnet it contains only five rhymes (the Shakespearean has seven) and the rhyming scheme is elegant, with a lovely motion to it, like a series of interlinking circles, rounded off with the rhyming coupletContinue reading “Experiments in Form Part 3: The Spenserian Sonnet”

Experiments in Form Part 2: The Petrarchan Sonnet

The most common, and probably the most popular, of the traditional poetic forms is the sonnet. However, there are three main types of sonnet – the English/Shakespearean, the Italian/Petrarchan and the Spenserian. Until Saturday I had never written a sonnet; my first attempt, entitled “The See-Saw”, was written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnetContinue reading “Experiments in Form Part 2: The Petrarchan Sonnet”

Experiments in Form Part 1: Limping

Some recent conversations with friends, along with a handful of other influences – skimming, for instance, the last book of essays published by the late Peter Steel, then picking up his last book of poems just today – have got me thinking about poetic form, about the vast range of forms out there which haveContinue reading “Experiments in Form Part 1: Limping”

Cleave (Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost)

Then Orphah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye, but Ruth clung to her. (Ruth 1:14) Many and wide are the roads you may take, Bitter and sweet is the journey; Many the gods you may may bow down before, Legion the altars to worship. Blessed the path that’s hardest to take, Sweetest the fruit with most poison;Continue reading “Cleave (Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost)”

The Law of Limits (For Richard Hooker, Theologian)

Law…is bound up with the compatible variety of things in the universe…In creating, God chooses to make a world of limits – that’s what creation is; his purpose being to secure the greatest possible variety of imitations of his own being, a complex of realities each…’participating’, sharing in his own being in a unique. (RowanContinue reading “The Law of Limits (For Richard Hooker, Theologian)”