One of Auden’s more challenging but also most remarkable poems is “Under Sirius”, written as a response to medieval Latin poet Fortunatus who, by Auden’s account, longed for humanity to experience some sort of tragedy to shake them to their senses. Auden’s inspiration came from the time known as the “dog days”, associated with theContinue reading “Indecisive Spring (After W.H. Auden’s “Under Sirius”)”
Tag Archives: God
Tethered
Last night I saw the new film “Gravity” at the cinema. If you have not seen it yet, I will not spoil the movie for you. Let me just say that it was one of the most powerful and visceral films I have seen in a long time. Coming home last night and reading PsalmContinue reading “Tethered”
Poems for World Mental Health Day 2013
Today is World Mental Health Day, and it’s becoming a tradition at The Consolations of Writing for me to put together a collection of 10 poems (for the 10th of the 10th) which explore mental health issues. I hope that these poems can be of comfort and encouragement. To everyone who struggles with mental illness:Continue reading “Poems for World Mental Health Day 2013”
All the wisdom of Babylon
“The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” They can only rearrange, those magi whose god is their own minds. Taking what is known already, they squint first through this eye then that. Ask for wisdom, theyContinue reading “All the wisdom of Babylon”
A Better Feast
Each year I give a present and a poem to my Year 12 Literature class when they finish school. That time is approaching for the class of 2013, and I’ve had on my heart this year that the thing I want them most of all to finish school knowing is that God’s grace is theContinue reading “A Better Feast”
What It Is
is a giving, a direction, a relation to God, a movement within the eternal. At His core is what we fail to be, to do, to know. And so we love to show what we are not and what He is: relationship, community, righteous love, perfected from the start,Continue reading “What It Is”
Like Love (After W.H. Auden’s “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”)
The first of our Auden poems for the month is the wonderful “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”, a poem that Auden wrote in 1939 around the time of his conversion to Christianity. It was famously written shortly after his profound and emphatic “September 1, 1939”, the poem he wrote on the outbreak ofContinue reading “Like Love (After W.H. Auden’s “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”)”
Psalm 125
Safe – like the hills’ fortifications, whelmed by the wind but not moved, not shaken; firm as rock, firm as covenant, grounded in Christ’s almighty core; stern as mountain, sure as sunrise, safe as heaven, safe.
Fulfilment
He remembered us in our low estate His love endures forever. (Psalm 136:23) The esteem of love which esteems greatly, sacrifices all for the receipt of nothing, and gives self when Self is notContinue reading “Fulfilment”
The Fig-Tree and the Worm
When complaint has its basis in the nature of the divine, appealing to justice and mercy and truth, waiting for signs which tarry now yet will come without delay, when complaining stands atContinue reading “The Fig-Tree and the Worm”
The Consolations of Writing 