R S Thomas To Rowan Williams

This is Rowan Williams' third collection of poems, poems of subtlety and complexity - and passion. They range widely in subject, place and mood. The poet visits a martyrs' memorial and a prison in Uganda. He meditates on the story of St Serafim of Sarov at the rock where 'at night Serafim knelt on the same rock, three long years'. He hears Bach's St Matthew Passion and is 'exhausted with new grief, old treacheries, the view without prospect'. He watches the 'black eyes fixed half-open' of Piero's Jesus and waits, 'paralysed as if in dreams, for his spring'. He celebrates - and translates the work of - the contemporary Russian poet, Inna Lisnianskaya. In several poems he reflects on the rivers of life, from their headwaters to the sea, and on landscapes and townscapes.

This study places the internationally renowned poetry of two major figures, R. S. Thomas and Rowan Williams, in a new and illuminating context. It demonstrates how theological convictions are embodied in the very form and texture of poems. The book draws attention to a cultural phenomenon of European resonance, because it runs counter to established secular practice in the UK, in Western Europe and in the US.

The study places the work of a major religious poet of the late twentieth century in a number of striking new perspectives that allow him to be viewed for the first time as an 'alternative' war poet, a conscience-stricken pacifist, a jealously opportunistic student of art, and an experimental biographer of the modern soul. Published to mark the centenary of the ‘ogre of Wales’, this volume deals with the idées fixes that serially possessed the fiercely intense imagination of R. S. Thomas: Iago Prytherch, Wales, his family and, of course, a vexingly elusive deity. Here, these familiar obsessions are set in several unusual contexts that bring Thomas’s poetry into startling new relief. The war poetry is considered alongside the poet’s early relationship to the English topographical tradition; comparisons with Borges and Levertov underline the international dimensions of the poetry’s concerns; the intriguing ‘secret code’ of some of Thomas’s Welsh-language references is cracked; and his painting-poems (including several hitherto unpublished) are brought centre-stage from the peripheries to which they have been routinely relegated.

The award-winning life story of Wales national poet and vicar R.S. Thomas is “a biography touched by genius.” (Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday) R.S. Thomas is widely considered as one of the twentieth-century’s greatest English language poets. His bitter yet beautiful collections on Wales, its landscape, people and identity, reflect a life of political and spiritual asceticism. Indeed, Thomas is a man who banned vacuum cleaners from his house on grounds of noise, whose first act on moving into an ancient cottage was to rip out the central heating, and whose attempts to seek out more authentically Welsh parishes only brought him more into contact with loud English holidaymakers. To Thomas’s many admirers this will be a surprising, sometimes shocking, but at last humanising portrait of someone who wrote truly metaphysical poetry. “A masterpiece.” —Daily Express “A striking, vivid and tender reading of the man . . . Excellent.” —Observer “Riotiously funny.” —Rowan Williams, Sunday Times “It is precisely Byron Rogers’ darkly comic sense of the ridiculous that melts the frost from the head of R.S. Thomas and humanizes a remote and bleakly beautiful writer.” —The Times “A chatty, disorderly but extremely good [biography] . . . A wonderfully comprehensive picture of the man.” —Daily Telegraph “As revealing an account of a severely private person that anyone could hope to achieve.” —Alan Brownjohn, Times Literary Supplement “Engagingly high-spirited and daring.” —Andrew Motion, Guardian Book of the Week “Charming and deftly written. . . . A very funny book.” —Literary Review “As readable and rounded a life of the man as could be written.” —Tablet Winner of the James Tait Black prize for biography

Long admired as a compassionate churchman and as a scholar of the highest order, Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, is also a poet of resounding voice and feeling whose verse, called "visionary yet earth-rooted," displays a genius for embodying abstract ideas in vivid, sensual images. "The Poems of Rowan Williams" gathers together the best pieces from the Archbishop's two previous collections, "After Silent Centuries" (1994) and "Remembering Jerusalem" (2001), together with several new works. These powerful, moving meditations are for everyone, religious and nonreligious alike. Archbishop Williams speaks from the crucible of faith, yet his words emerge from the universal experience of life. As Williams himself says: "I dislike the idea of being a religious poet. I would prefer to be a poet for whom religious things mattered intensely." The subject matter of these sixty-five poems ranges broadly -- the natural world, works of art, recollections of a visit to the Holy Land at Easter, thoughts arising from fragments of the ancient Celtic world, a modern Welsh scene, a group of thin girls awaiting at a bus stop. A particularly poignant group of poems captures Williams's reflections on death, arising first from his feelings of grief at the loss of loved ones (including his father and mother) and widening to include the last days of Tolstoy, Nietzsche in his madness, Rilke, Simone Weil, and Thomas Merton. There are also some free translations -- three well-known poems by Rilke and nine works by Welsh poets -- in which Williams succeeds marvelously in conveying the imagery and energy of the originals. Williams's pen is lean and lyrical. His vision is penetrating andwise. More, his treatment of his subjects never fails to render them in suggestive, very often redemptive, ways. Readers from all walks of life with come to cherish this lovely collection of verse.

Fairacres Publications 144 Exploring some of the finest passages in English prose and poetry, from William Tyndale to the end of the twentieth century, Rowan Williams pursues strands of thought in Christian contemplation which reflect on social responsibility. He perceives this approach as being deeply characteristic of the Anglican spirit and invites us to recognize its enduring significance in our own day.