Author David Grieve
Publisher Sacristy £7.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9781789590142
Poetry in the Celtic Tradition
In this collection of poems, Grieve’s theme is ‘how a place …’ in particular, a thin place, where in Celtic tradition, the veil between earth and heaven is thinned,‘… is sacrament / to looking eyes, and disclosure and trace.’ The poems locate thin places in past and present ‘Lindisfarne, Durham and the Journey Between (as one poem is entitled)’, but most frequently, in particular locations, on specific dates in the Christian year, in Durham Cathedral, where he is chaplain. Grieve, who wrote previously about mental health and faith in Hope in Dark Places, explicitly acknowledges that his poems ‘are therapy, and they are fightings.’ The majority are invigorated by faithful hope. As he puts it in a meditation on the Cathedral crib: ‘All the impulses of incarnate love . . . /cry that there must, / there will be recovery.’ Readers will be challenged by Grieve’s perception that, if recovery is to result from the experiences thin places stimulate, these are not about cosy, self-contained reflection, but finally proclaim dismissal: they ‘send us out to live justly, to love mercy / and to embody the Kingdom.’
JOHN MOSS
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