The 20th-century poet T.S. Eliot first gained popular attention with the publication of his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Often cited as one of the key touchstones in the creation of the modernist style, Eliot began to develop a paradox of articulate inarticulacy that would pervade his poetry for the rest of his career. Much could, and has, been said about this, but I think these few lines get at how many of us might feel about poetry:
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.¹
Yes, poetry can be ridiculous and obtuse (at least when I try my hand at it), but this year across our Diocese, I think some of us have discovered that poetry, even if it at times makes us now feel the Fool, can help us navigate the inarticulacy of our lives.
Here in Rupert’s Land, we have come to the end of a year exploring the Anglican poetic tradition. Thanks to funding from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, the Diocese of Rupert’s Land received $25,000 USD this year to explore this theme through a variety of workshops, classes, lectures, retreats, and conferences.
We had three goals with this project. First, we wanted to reintroduce disciples to the resources of the Anglican poetic tradition. To this end, we hosted a class on John Donne and the Bible through St John’s College, launched a lecture series on Anglican poetics that toured around the Diocese in a pilgrimage of poetics, and crafted a conference at St. George’s featuring the one and only Malcolm Guite! We met a diverse cast of poets and scholars through these events, and it was so encouraging to see the willingness of folks to travel around the diocese to take part in these events.
Our second goal was to help people enter more deeply into Anglican poetics by encouraging them to engage with language in a more hands-on way. To this end, we held a series of poetry writing workshops and lay worship training events, both in parishes and at Faith Horizons, where our skilled facilitators introduced participants to poetry about work, ecology, Indigenous identity, food, lament, and God. Some of the poetry created in these workshops is featured in this special issue of the Rupert’s Land News, and it is a testimony to the creativity and courage of those in our midst who wrestle with the inadequacies of our language to help us see something true and beautiful about our world.
Our final goal was to use the generous spaciousness that a poetic faith offers to create connections with people who don’t have much relationship with Anglicanism to discover something about our shared humanity. In February, I cohosted an inter-religious poetry and ritual exchange with Maryam Rezayi, a graduate Fellow at St John’s College who studies Sufi theology. Together, we created an event called “Receiving Roses Across Traditions” wherein we received gifts of poetry, practices, and food, back and forth over an afternoon outside the chapel. In the spring, Kirsten PintoGfroerer hosted a women’s retreat for us up at Camp Arnes that welcomed women from across the Diocese and beyond to a time of silence, reflection and mindfulness. In the fall, I teamed up with Manitoba Pioneer Camp to host a retreat out at Shoal Lake, where we read the ancient poet-philosopher Boethius with a group of about 20 young adults from a number of different faith backgrounds to ask big questions about fate, suffering, and the purpose of life. Finally, we also had the pleasure of collaborating with the Winnipeg Poetry Slam team, along with the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba, to host a series of poetry slam workshops, which we capped off with a very well-attended open mic night at the Daily Bread Cafe.
Different folks will have connected with different parts of the Anglican Poetics Project throughout the year, but as somebody who had the unique opportunity to attend almost everything, I think it was this last goal, connecting with those beyond our tradition, that was the most fruitful. For better or worse, Canadians have largely made up their minds about the Anglican Church. But being able to work with the broader community through poetry opened up opportunities for connection and collaboration that aren’t usually possible.
Throughout this project, I’ve worked with the artist Seika Dyck to create a logo and a series of stamps to visually represent what we’ve been up to. The Anglican Poetics Project logo which has been on all our event posters visually sums up the experience that this project has sought to cultivate. While what we have been doing has been “held” to some extent under the overarching roof of the church, the actual work has been done in the wide-open and indeterminate space below. I think this tension between being held by our institutions and traditions, and having the latitude to creatively work out our faith, is exactly what makes the Anglican way of being Christian so compelling to so many of us. We may be “full of high sentence, and a bit obtuse,” but as Eliot also reminds us, this journey that we are on still provides us time and opportunities to go on.
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.²
Thank you to all those who came along for this journey this year, and thanks especially to the numerous people who gave of their time and talents to make these events a success. Thanks especially to Nate Wall-Bowering, Paul Dyck, and Seika Dyck for consistently taking my garbled ideas and returning with beautiful gifts for the Church. And finally, once again, thanks to the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and the Lilly Foundation for the generous Vital Worship, Vital Preaching grant that made all of this possible.
- T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in Collected Poems 1909-1962, 7.
- Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” 4.
