WRITINGS ONLINE — Studio for Art, Faith & History
Writing Poems for Sunday Morning
The Studio for Art, Faith & History
hosts seminars and study tours, exhibitions and performances, and supports new work in the visual and performing arts.
This website gathers essays by the artists and writers and scholars who have participated in the programs of Gordon College in Orvieto, and which reflect the themes of the Studio for Art, Faith & History.
In this essay John writes:
“Almost thirty years ago, my wife and I joined a small Presbyterian Church named St Cuthbert's, in the city of Hamilton, Ontario. At the time, I had two published books of poetry to my name. A number of months after we started attending St Cuthbert's, the music director, Bart Nameth, approached me and said, "You write poetry. Do you want to write a poem for Pentecost?" My reply was an immediate, "Not a chance. I am not a religious poet." Religious poetry, to my mind, meant predictability of subject, knowing before you begin where you will end, and sentimentality.
“But I respected Bart. He played the piano for our church services. A grand piano, with which he accompanied the hymn singing and responses (many of which he wrote) and from which, during the Prelude, Offertory and Postlude, those times in the worship service when he was free to roam, could come the strains of composers from Bach to Frank Zappa to Miles Davis to Bjork. To Bart’s way of thinking any music on earth can be brought into that space on a Sunday morning and become praise and worship.
“And so, out of that respect him and for his catholicity, and trusting his perception over my own, I agreed to give it a try. I set one rule for myself…
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WRITINGS ONLINE — Hamilton Arts & Letters
Daylighting Chedoke
We’ll put-in
by the Waterfront Trail pedestrian bridge that spans the creek mouth at Cootes Paradise, our local marsh, and paddle the channelled waterway between a four-lane highway on the left, and on the right a walking path and two-lane road, a French-language school, senior’s residence, and high-rise apartment building, in that order. We'll enter a tunnel under the highway, then abandon our canoe and continue on foot at the tunnel’s far end, where the creek bed becomes concrete, the water is shallow, and only a craft with the draft of a popsicle stick, the draft of half a wooden clothespin or a leaf, can float freely.”
In the company of relatives and those who have come before, John follows his inner child through a stretch of Hamilton’s subterranean infrastructure.
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WRITINGS ONLINE — Hamilton Arts & Letters
WHY MUST WE DIE
WALLS TALK.
They speak in simple facts of brick and glass. After the bare facts comes the wall’s story, the people on the other side, on the inside, who have charge of its upkeep, the additions and subtractions, or who oversee its neglect. One way or another, suddenly or over a period of years, they die, others die, people close to us, our family, friends, parents, spouse. Why Must we Die wanders through themes of place and dwelling and family and generation.
WRITINGS ONLINE — IMAGE
STRANGER THE STORY
I’m God, she says, trying it on for size,
then giggles, can hardly believe herself.
What’s so funny? we call from the hillsides,
our armchairs that hover over her play.
But like the grand old dame behind the curtain
who’s overheard the menfolk gossip she’s pregnant,
she turns her face to us, […]
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WRITINGS ONLINE — IMAGE
Our Loves Quit the Places We Bury Them, and Ascend
Yellow green, the willows are emerging first again
out from our color-free past, whisper
how brown it’s been, is yet.
Across the street
the magnolia bush, wild candelabrum, has set
pink white tapers at its fingertips, waiting
for the day to ignite.
Everyone waits […]
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