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poetry

Confronting death and resurrection: emerging Dantesque poet is ‘a light in the darkness’ of ‘secular, locked-down’ modernity

April 02, 2024

The emergence of the London-based poet Ned Denny has been a light in the darkness of the last four years, during which worldwide circumstances have changed to alarming effect. In 2019, his Unearthly Toys won the Seamus Heaney Prize for a first collection. He followed it with a version of Dante’s Commedia, recasting the original

‘Prayer for Holy Week’ by Elizabeth Jennings: ‘Love me in my willingness to suffer’

March 26, 2024

Prayer for Holy Week Love me in my willingness to sufferLove me in the gifts I wish to offer Teach me how you love and have to die And I will try Somehow to forget myself and giveLife and joy so dead things start to live. Let me show now an untrammelled joy, Gold without

Once Oscar Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas died amongst friends and reconciled to the Church

February 22, 2024

Now with paint peeling from its walls and shutters, and loose plaster and threadbare curtains, Old Monks Farmhouse in Lancing, West Sussex, must once have been a charming building. Grade-II listed, it was registered as a chapel in 1954 and extended for a larger congregation in 1959. It later became the presbytery when the neighbouring

Franz Wright and the cleansing truth of the Resurrection

April 14, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone considers the deep, spiritually introspective words of an award-winning poet who worked with grieving children. In Arlington, Massachusetts, the Centre for Grieving Children and Teenagers had an operating principle: “Being with others who have experienced a death reduces isolation and can provide hope.” In 2004, the centre’s programme director noted that one particular

Patrick Kavanagh: Poet in the twilight

February 01, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone considers the work of the renowned and often controversial Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh

Seeing Spain’s history through art

August 12, 2022

Incomparable Realms: Spain during the Golden Age, 1500-1700 Jeremy Robbins Reaktion Books, £25, 464 pages Spain’s Golden Age spanned the reigns of five monarchs which form-ed a “lineage of piety”: Charles I (Charles V when Holy Roman Emperor), Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, ending with the death in 1700 of Charles II, the “Bewitched”,

Jack Kerouac at 100

June 28, 2022

The American writer Jack Kerouac, whose centenary fell this year, was adamant about the Catholic inspiration of his work, which he repeatedly referred to, in part to disarm his critics. In 1961, Kerouac claimed to one correspondent that his most celebrated novel, On the Road (1957), was “really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming

The flesh made word

December 03, 2021

Collected Poems Rowan Williams Carcanet, £15.99, 249 pages ________ The poetry of Rowan Williams is full of moments when the known world becomes translucent and lets in an unfamiliar light. Sometimes, this happens when watching someone – a child, perhaps – fall asleep. …sleepy yourself, impatient and resigned at once, and out of nowhere