Tag Archives: Rupert Loydell

There’s Everything to Play For: The Poetry of Peter Finch by Andrew Taylor (Seren Books)

Posted on April 29, 2025 by tearsinthefence
There’s Everything to Play For: The Poetry of Peter Finch by Andrew Taylor (Seren Books)

When I reviewed Peter Finch’s Collected Poems One and Collected Poems Two back in 2022, I could not help but discuss Finch’s presence in the small press publishing world from the early 1980s, when I became part of that with my Stride magazine and imprint. Finch was an enabler, a facilitator, an encourager and contributor; he was everywhere you turned in the poetry world. In my earlier 2020 review of his book The Machineries of Joy, I noted that ‘Finch shows no sign of reining in his eccentricities’ and titled that review ‘A Life-time of Astonishment’, which referred to Finch’s lifetime, not mine, although I continue to be astonished by the poet’s work.

Having edited those Collected Poems, Andrew Taylor has gone on to now publish a hybrid biography and critical study of Finch, thankfully concentrating on the latter as a way to facilitate the former. So, only events, activities and associations which have fed in to and influenced Finch’s editing, writing, performing and publishing, are mentioned; there is no nonsense here about the colour of wallpaper, girlfriends or the makes of cars purchased. It is all about poetry and his relationship to it.

Early on, Finch embraced underground, countercultural publishing and stuck with it. In a similar manner he situated his work within the very different, often warring, areas of sound-experiment, comedy, performance art, visual poetry and the mainstream. He was never a weirdy-beardy mumbling in the corner, never an arselicker or cringing academic, never a self-centred ego-tripper, but he could get funding, submit to and persuade both avant-garde and major publishers, talk poetics and critical theory, sweet talk and upset others, as required, and hold his own against those who dismissed his output. 

His knowledge of the history of sound and performance writing was second-to-none, and he frequented the boundaries where it blurred into improvisation, out-jazz, or speaking in tongues. He learnt Welsh and critiqued England’s colonial inclinations towards its neighbour; he used psychogeography, flânerie and landscape writing to document Cardiff and its environs; he shared and taught and challenged both would-be and experienced writers; and he kept up with contemporary issues of digital poetics, AI, sampling and remix. (Taylor suggests this is not new: ‘Finch’s use of technology has always been present in the work.’)

Taylor surmises that Finch’s poetry has changed, perhaps even mellowed, over time (something I might dispute), suggesting that ‘a typical late-period Finch poem’ contains ‘nostalgic reflection, usually focussed on a key memory’ where ‘the level of detail is remarkable’ and resists ‘resorting to the bland anecdotal which is so commonplace in mainstream poetry’. Elsewhere he suggests that ‘Peter Finch has always been seen as “other”‘ and is ‘[n]otoriously difficult to categorise’, this difficulty perhaps leading to an element of critical indifference and mainstream rejection. 

And yet Finch was a poet who charmed those who met him and/or heard him read. His stage presence was of a friendly eccentric, not an arty-farty weirdo. As this book at times make clear, he could do provocation and rebellion when required, but mostly he wanted to get his work read and listened to and found numerous ways to do so. Finch understood rhyme, syncopation, and rhythm, knew how to keep an audience amused, shocked and entertained. He was part of international networks of writers and artists, an avid reader, listener and consumer of new and newly-discovered writers. He read to understand what language could and might do, whether as decomposed text on the page, political manifesto, comic absurdism, surreal chant or seemingly personal confession.

Taylor gets all this. His 200 page book is as thorough, reasoned and generous as Finch’s own books. His critical engagement with Finch’s writing is astute but highly readable, as are his contextual discussions where he notes influences, mentors, examples and inspirations. As Taylor notes at the close of the book, ‘Though nothing is assured, what we can be certain of is that Peter Finch will continue to write poetry, innovate, walk Wales and push language to extremes.’ I really do hope so.

Rupert Loydell 29th April 2025

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Preloved Metaphors by Rupert Loydell (The Red Ceilings Press)

Posted on April 23, 2024 by tearsinthefence
Preloved Metaphors by Rupert Loydell (The Red Ceilings Press)

There is a moment near the end of Rupert M Loydell’s new poetry collection, Preloved Metaphors, that recalls Homer’s Odyssey.  Loydell’s poem ‘Wherewithal’ includes the sentence ‘Everything / should have a poem written about it, // nothing should be left out.’ The echo, of course, is of Odysseus’ duping the Cyclops by identifying himself as ‘Nobody,’ so that when the Cyclops calls for help he inadvertently sends his potential rescuers away by his explanation to them that ‘Nobody is killing me.’  It’s a funny moment in the Odyssey, one the ancient bards surely enjoyed singing, and I imagine Loydell smiling at his desk as he scribbled out (keyed in? cut-and-pasted?) his sentence with its analogous ambiguity.  On one reading, it calls for countless poems, one for each of the countless things in the world, with not a single thing left unsung; on the other reading, it calls for a single poem that is about the category “everything,” and eschews mention of the contrary category, ‘nothing.’

Both moments, the episode in Homer and the lines in Loydell, offer the reminder that irony and bullshit don’t pull neatly apart, that truth-facing Socratic / Kierkegaardian irony and truth-trashing Trumpist hoo-ha serve opposite ends but apply the same medium.  Both recognize that, as Wittgenstein so cannily confesses, ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.’  Odysseus gets it that wordplay can deceive; language can mask me.  Loydell gets it that wordplay can undeceive; I can unmask language.  Loydell’s poems, generated not by emoting tranquil recollections but by a recuperative process of collage/bricolage, ever implicitly ask what his poem ‘A Theology of Ghosts’ asks explicitly.

Do you understand

the words?  Do you know

that I have my own way

to burn away mind’s fog?

If language is a window, there are poets who would look through it, emphasizing that out my window I see the world, and others who would look at it, emphasizing that I see the window itself, and of the world only what the window frames, as the window frames it.  There are poets, that is, who take themselves as seeing the world beyond the window, and those who take themselves as seeing the world in the window.  If, say, Larkin could captain the former camp, Loydell could captain the latter.  Preloved Metaphors is, as its title suggests, medium-forward, linguistically self-aware.  If the book’s title suggests that self-awareness, the poems’ titles, plural, confirm it: the Table of Contents is an abecedarian, revealing that the poems are arranged in alphabetical order by title.

Preloved Metaphors is in various ways a compact book.  Physically, it is pocket-size, A6 (U.S. readers: about 4” x 6”), and slender, give or take 40 pages (few enough that they need no numbers). Even the press run is small, a limited edition of 40 copies.  In other respects, though, this book is large.  One of the lines in the very first poem, a prefatory poem called ‘All That Is Melts Into Air,’ reads, ‘We only believe what we can question,’ and that indicates something of the book’s capaciousness.  In Preloved Metaphors, as is typically the case in Loydell’s work, the poems don’t pretend to be ‘straight talk.’  Every declarative offers also an interrogative, so everything is open to question, meaning everything is open.  

Loydell’s process of ‘remixology,’ reconfiguration rather than invention, results in poems that are about seeing the world and seeing oneself seeing.  These poems see the seeing no less than they see the seen, as in ‘By Any Other Means.’

… everything is made, 

hands-on experience suspended as

we try to find the words we need to

describe the accidental and obscene.

We only have to look to see ourselves.

Loydell’s remixing makes other remixes possible, such as repurposing a fragment from one poem in Preloved Metaphors, assigning it standing as an indicator of the tenor of the whole book.  As I do here, with the last line of Loydell’s poem ‘Unclear’: ‘this is a live beyond.’

H.L Hix 23rdApril 2024

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I.M. David Grubb

Posted on April 9, 2024 by tearsinthefence
I.M. David Grubb

‘There are three elements central to all my poetry and prose: celebration, wonder, and discovering’  – David Grubb, 2009

David Grubb was born in 1941. He worked as a psychiatric nurse, a teacher and headteacher, and for Barnados. Aghast at the fact they had several press officers simply for the royal family (in relation to the charity) he left and set up his own charity, Children’s Aid Direct. This charity was hands on, and money for staffing and administration costs was raised separately from normal donations. David often convinced lorry drivers from Reading, near where he lived, to make a trip to Bosnia or Kosovo to deliver aid; he often accompanied them, clad in a flak jacket, and wrote all the charity’s news reports and publicity material. 

This writing could be persuasive, shocking and informative, but it wasn’t just about reports, news and charity work. David was a writer throughout most of his life: novels, books of poetry and an inventive autobiography, along with letterpress editions and thousands of appearances in poetry magazines and anthologies. He believed in the power of the arts, was sure that refugees, orphans and those otherwise affected by disaster and conflict needed to play, dance and tell their stories as much as they needed food and shelter. Aspiring authors too: in later years, having ‘retired’, he became a writing tutor and mentor.

His poems dealt with people, be that memories of his parents, those he met in passing, other poets, historical figures, the insane and those disregarded by society. He had strong spiritual beliefs but did not preach at others, was open to debate, conjecture and the impossibilities of belief and faith. 

In addition to those who inhabited his writing, he was a dedicated husband, father and grandfather. That dedication included several years of caring for his wife, Beverley, before she had to spend her final days in a home. Ironically, David would also move to a home so his dementia could be monitored and he could be looked after. He died peacefully on Easter Monday, 2024.

•

Over the years he and I had not only a publisher/author relationship, but also a friendship and a dialogue in poems, where we would write back to each other’s poems that struck us, usually as new poetry collections were published. The poem below, written in 2013, picked up on the idea of faith and prayer and death being an unsolvable riddle within the expansive universe. Unpublished at the time, it seems an appropriate memorial to him.

     David Grubb 1941-2024


YOUR OWN RIDDLE

‘In the centre of the prayer is your own riddle.’
    – David Grubb

It’s more of a joke though, without a punchline,
and no friendly audience to applaud. Doubt
creeps up and in, then spreads. Answers
don’t make sense anymore, especially as
you can’t remember what your question was
or even why you asked. Life’s too busy 
to bother with anyone who’s too sure 
of what’s right and wrong. Black and white 
becomes grey, the vertical and horizontal 
have both started to shift. Life blurs, repeats, 
and slurs its speech, speaks in a language 
you don’t understand. The riddle is unsolvable, 
the joke’s worn thin; we’ve heard it too many times 
before. They always said it was a matter of life 
and death, but as people you know depart, 
life and death seem less clearly defined, 
memories crowd in and you remember the morning 
your best friend’s son called to say his dad had died; 
that night in London when, going back for coffee, 
another mate’s mum told you both his father 
had suddenly dropped dead earlier that evening. 
Phone calls and car rides, surprises and decay:
news of death travels slowly and hurts all the more
for doing so. The wonder is we can live at all,
knowing what comes next. The wonder is we get up 
every morning and stagger through the day. 
In the centre of each prayer is a riddle:
the white shape of a body, outlined in the stars.

   © Rupert M Loydell

Rupert Loydell 9th April 2024


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A tribute to Gboyega Odubanjo

Posted on September 4, 2023 by tearsinthefence
A tribute to Gboyega Odubanjo

No Reason

‘not understanding a prayer is no reason not to say amen’
    – Gboyega Odubanjo ‘Poems (With Drums)’

Not understanding loss is no reason not to keep looking

Not understanding grammar is no reason not to break the rules

Not understanding electricity is no reason not to flick the switch

Not understanding music is no reason not to make a noise

Not understanding silence is no reason not to keep quiet

Not understanding a poem is no reason not to read it

Not understanding death is no reason not to stay alive

Not understanding grief is no reason not to cry

Not understanding anything is no reason not to try


   © Rupert M Loydell 4th September 2023


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Plans for Sentences by Renee Gladman (Wave Books)

Posted on June 24, 2022 by tearsinthefence
Plans for Sentences by Renee Gladman (Wave Books)

These sentences are isolated outgrowths on the page, declamatory black islands on the sea of white page.

These sentences are accompanied by, perhaps arise out of or derive from, drawings. These sentences are unsure if they are words or images, are what arises from asemic writing, from figures, plans and imaginary architecture. These sentences ‘inscribe their own topography; make their shape with their shape’ (fig. 23).

These sentences ‘both fog and chart the rising structure’ (fig. 45) as they gesture, dome, tower and broadcast. These sentences are active participants in the construction of a shelter for the reader, built in their own individual way.

These sentences ‘balance the question of movement against that of enclosure’ (fig. 7). These sentences take risks, do some pretty heavy semantic lifting, and sometimes collapse under the weight of their own intentions and possible interpretations. 

These sentences are carefully built temporary shelters, and can be rearranged into other dwellings. These sentences imagine possible future sentences, as purely text, at the end of the book.

These sentences are dream structures, buildings made of language arising from sentences which are drawings. These sentences ‘will up and flutter and through’ (fig. 60), ‘will not know space’ (fig. 5).

These sentences explore sentence construction and the nature of language, ‘and will not always say what they mean’ (p. 127). They often self-destruct but ‘will open when they fail’ (fig. 47).

These sentences are both tentative and self-assured. These sentences cluster and work together, but also stand up for themselves and elbow each other aside. 

These sentences are hollows of meaning, are moments of illumination.

These sentences are some of many.

These sentences have no closure


Rupert Loydell, 24th June 2022

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Tracing the Distance by Andrea Moorhead (The Bitter Oleander Press)

Posted on May 14, 2022 by tearsinthefence
Tracing the Distance by Andrea Moorhead (The Bitter Oleander Press)

This book is a quartet of slow, accumulative, long prose poems that touch on landscape, personal experience, geography, and philosophy. Sectioned and/or paragraphed, they gradually build up encounters with ‘Landscapes. Subtle shiftings of reality.’ These shiftings come from attention to detail, consideration of change, the seasons, the weather, how the light falls, and of how humans engage with the world around them.

Moorhead is interested in her own place in things, and in place itself, willing to be both scientific and emotional, rational and speculative, and to grapple with the unknown, in an attempt to allow ‘this existence to be full’. This fullness of experience, of course, means dealing with ups and downs, winter and summer, light and dark, the desired-for and the unwelcome. Death and mortality are part of nature, as is longing, absence, memory and anticipation; our own stories make sense of our lives, and ‘[f]ables frame the day’. Moorhead is well aware that ‘[t]his insistence on recollection alters the perception of light, changes the angle, lifts the dark shades to a brighter hue’, and she willingly brings that self-awareness to her texts.

But her self, her ego if you prefer, is pushed to the background throughout this writing. Moorhead gazes outwards, sits still and observes, walks and watches. She is well travelled and well aware of ecological damage and devastation, in fact it informs her work, but her work is mostly sitting still, looking and thinking about what she can see, and putting it in to language. ‘Sometimes’, she writes, ‘the day itself wobbles, sometimes everything wobbles, oscillates, shimmers and shivers along some axis that isn’t readily apparent.’ 

She attempts to explain how history, geography and language – ‘remarks’ – ‘have a way of escaping […] perhaps dissolving into what people call thin air, the substanceless extension of lived space.’ Moorhead is busy trying to document what is missing, push beyond the surface of the world into the past, the now, and the elsewhere, but ‘[t]he physical world preserves its mystery’ and only ‘fragile words linger’, perhaps not for long.

Much as Moorhead does her best to watch and understand, think and engage, she admits that ‘[t]he hallucinatory boundaries are unclear; illusion, mirage, hope and expectation reek havoc with the mind.’ We cannot escape what we have done and are doing, our shared responsibility, or leave our assumptions and wishes, our selves, behind: ‘flesh is slow to absorb what flickers across the mind’. But in this wonderful book Moorhead attempts to ‘narrow the gap between lost reflection and the insistent weight of the body’, to earth herself and us in time and place, the very now of where and how we live.

Rupert Loydell 14th May 2022

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Afterword by David Miller (Shearsman Books), Circle Square Triangle by David Miller (Spuyten Duyvil)

Posted on February 6, 2022 by tearsinthefence
Afterword by David Miller (Shearsman Books), Circle Square Triangle by David Miller (Spuyten Duyvil)

David Miller’s writing has always crossed boundaries: between poetry and fiction, between the confessional and poetically distant, the heartfelt and philosophical. His work has consistently used short texts – often containing quotes or intertextual allusions – in juxtaposition to other short texts to build up a patchwork effect within a text. In the ‘Notes’ to Afterword, he refers to ‘independent texts. Yet related.’ and ‘Ruins, edifices, fragmented architectures.’ Adopting a phrase from Circle Square Triangle a reader might think of reading Miller more as ‘through & past & back’.

But it is never a puzzle to be solved, or a jigsaw that makes a picture with straight edges and is complete. Miller’s work is often more like an archaeological tesserae, the remains of a mosaic that has slowly been revealed by digging and then patient brush work. The quotations and allusions, be they from neglected authors, obscure religious texts or other poets’ writing, are sufficient in themselves: we do not need to read them for ourselves, Miller has captured the essence of what he wishes to say or mention and embedded that within his own web of writing.

Because the texts are so brief, it means the language and ideas have to work hard on the page. These are poems that have been edited and shaped, revised and rewritten until there is just enough on the page, enough to capture a moment, a thought, an image or idea. These are then allowed to accumulate and link, via association and theme, to produce a complete work. It risks being precious, elusive and cryptic, but Miller’s work is consistently clear-headed and precise, carefully sculpted on the page and for the ear.

The back cover blurb suggests that Afterword is ‘a long poem in fragments, but it might also be seen as a poem sequence of memories and mediations, dreams and visions’. Thankfully, Miller retains his specificity and imagistic skill to keep away from the new age ideas this conjured up for me, although at times these texts can be more abstract than much of his writing, relying on wordplay, visual/aural echo and surprising trains of thought to make their point:

     rage

     rags | rags we have | rags we become we are       (page 86)

     so late | & still it rains

     so long ah so long that it rains it rains & it rains

     cherries in kirsch | once               (page 83)

Much of Afterword references spirituality, belief and love, often within the context of regret and loss, but also in relation to art, theology and relationships, and the book slowly moves towards a kind of resolution which is rooted in the physicality of fingers, speech and lips.

Circle Square Triangle is more of a sequence in the expected way: a long poem in four numbered parts, sometimes divided again into numbered parts, with individual poems (or parts of poems) delineated by asterisks between them, but the whole running on over the pages. I confess that even after several reads (and also as an unnamed character who is briefly present in a poem) I struggle with this work. It is the first time for me that Miller has tried to imbue too much meaning into some of his images or let named artists and writers stand in as a kind of shorthand for what he wants to say. And the title phrase does not resonate or underpin the work as Miller clearly wants it to do.

There are wonderful memories and moments, even compressed narratives, in this text, but there are also poems that moan and poems that seem too ordinary in what they depict. It is clear these autobiographical stories and memories are important to the author, but sometimes they seem slight or disgruntled in their retelling. Others, of course, may disagree and find ways to engage with Circle Square Triangle, but for me it is Afterword, along with Miller’s Collected Poems, Reassembling Still, I shall be returning to.

Rupert Loydell 6th February 2022

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Aliens, angels & annunciations: Sarah Cave and Rupert Loydell in conversation

Posted on January 14, 2020 by tearsinthefence
Aliens, angels & annunciations: Sarah Cave and Rupert Loydell in conversation

Rupert Loydell: So, A Confusion of Marys is finally out. A couple of people have asked about the process, the research, and motive for writing it. I can talk about trips to Italy and being mesmerised by a couple of Fra Angelica paintings, and then following through by looking at lots more annunciations and art and photography about angels, about deliberately [mis]reading works of art and events as annunciations, and a vague idea of something from elsewhere intruding into the human realm, but what’s your perception of coming on board as it were? I honestly can’t recall how we ended up doing those Joyful Mysteries pamphlets and then the Impossible Songs pamphlet.

Sarah Cave: I grew up a Christian and have been mentally dealing with what that means for the best part of three decades. My long poem in A Confusion of Marys was really my way of trying to understand Mary – a figure of grace – and to draw her for myself; beyond the annunciation, beyond liturgy. I think our conversations about the annunciation and John F Deane’s beautiful sequence of poems about Lydia in Give Dust a Tongue – the woman Jesus meets at Jacob’s well – helped frame how I wanted Mary to emerge in her own right. Also, when Pussy Riot’s ‘Punk Prayer’ was released in a softer form by the Norwegian singer Moddi, I was struck by their pleas, ‘Mary, our hands are tied in prayer / Help us if you’re there!’ and ‘O Holy Mary, be a feminist!’. I was also struck by the way that Maria Alyokhina talked about faith in interviews; faith wasn’t something that belonged to the church but to the individual. ‘Punk Prayer’ isn’t irreligious, it’s rather an intercession begging Mary to dissolve the kyriarchy and free women from society’s oppressive expectations.

I think the two pamphlets we did were a combination of this and some very silly poems about ducks. I’m certain there was an element of irreverent one-upmanship going on there too.

RL: So, what’s an autophagy then? And what’s it got to do with Mary or the annunciation? Explain yourself!

SC: Autophagy literally means self-eating.

It’s a biological process of cell regeneration – clearing out old cells to encourage regrowth – and I’m interested in the idea of regenerative theology. I was a cradle Anglican and within that tradition Mary is more of a backseat figure – usually appearing in knitted form at crib services – no intercessions etc. I wanted to bring her to the forefront and to understand how, in her all pervasive way, she has shaped my life and the expectations people place on my life – gender, sexuality, politics, mysticism – and the lives of the women around me, and of course, how those expectations must have affected Mary’s own life.

I like that the title, A Confusion of Marys, evokes a sense of the process of writing and re-writing, the Marian annunciation scene as palimpsest. Was this deliberate?

RL: Very much so. I thought of it as a series of variations, accumulations and versions of the same event – including, as you say, some very silly and jokey ideas. I wanted to get away from any idea of theological certainty, I’m much more interested in doubt and myth, symbolism and tangential ideas than anything fixed or final. I like stories that get retold throughout culture, and the annunciation certainly seems to be one that has. I guess the long prose poem that opens the book is an attempt to pile up versions of the story: it could be this, or this, or like that, or what about this?

I confess I’m quite interested in being slightly irreverent, too. I’m not very good at po-faced religion in any shape or form, although I quite like some traditional liturgy. But I abhor those who use their certainty as an excuse for censorship, racism, hatred and abuse.

I enjoyed finding some of the images of angels and annunciations I did. There’s a surprising amount of angel imagery, for instance, in contemporary photography, and many abstract paintings use ‘Annunciation’ as a title. I don’t think these tie in to any version of the traditional Mary and angel story, but I was happy to make the link for myself, just as I did with other ideas such as a magician and his assistant, or boys at a fancy dress party.

From what you’ve said, I’m guessing that your work is actually much more personal to you, and less ideas-driven, than mine is? I’m not suggesting it’s autobiography, but more concerned with ideas that are really important to you, whereas mine could be seen as a bit of an intellectual joke?

SC: Yes, they’re ideas that are important to me because I feel part of those stories. I see their patterns in my own life and the books that I read; a kind of cultural pareidolia, the culture I am simultaneously absorbing and rejecting, honouring and dishonouring. But, of course, the sequence isn’t autobiographical, no more than any other post-confessional poetry.

I think humour, play and irreverence are important when talking about theology. Human spirituality is such a beautifully absurd thing and, as you say, there’s nothing worse than po-faced believers, who sit in judgement. It’s the first step to exclusion and ‘theological certainty’ is what makes heretics and heresy is merely an historical excuse for killing people who don’t agree with you. There’s no way either of us would have survived the inquisition!

You don’t have to look much further than the bible for the sense of versioning, which you’re talking about. I love that this weird and supposedly holy text is the best sense the Council of Nicaea could make of the disparate strands of accounts, prophesy and scripture, and gloriously, it still doesn’t make much sense.

Did you have a personal sense of Mary? Where did your interest in her start?

RL: I’ve always been very resistant to any sense of Marian theology. Saints weren’t a thing in the church I was brought up in, and Mary was simply a human being chosen by God. I think I’m mostly interested in the painting and the way people do turn Mary into something else, almost non-human: it’s very strange to me. I keep coming back to that moment as the idea of worlds colliding; it’s not just me being silly when I wrote about the annunciation as an alien encounter.

Having said that, a lot of the contemporary art I looked at, such as Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s video installation and the book of it, is very concerned with female human experience, with exploring the story through Mary’s eyes. And of course I’ve reversioned the story from both the male and female gaze, from lustful angels and desirous Mary, with the idea of the angel turning up via an online dating agency, to Joseph’s point-of-view, feeling resentful and sidelined in both the original event and the ensuing art.

It’s strange how once an idea starts – and originally my sense of the annunciation was very much to do with Renaissance art and Italy, as well as colour and ekphrasis – one can interpret almost anything through the lens of a particular story or event. At times it feels like an endless and somewhat ridiculous shaggy dog story, but it’s become a real way to think about all sorts of stories and encounters in the world, a way of understanding human beings. So, I guess my ‘sense of Mary’ is not very specific, it’s about bewildered, frightened, confused and perhaps empowered humans caught up in strange encounters and activities, sometimes aware they are within a painting, sculpture, film or story.

I can’t help thinking about a text I use to teach the first years with, where Gabriel Josipovici talks about how stories die unless they are changed, reinvented, argued over and made new. He also questions the idea of ownership of stories, or even being able to ‘ring-fence’ them. Perhaps we are just part of a religious and artistic dialogue?

SC: Gosh, yes. The book is undoubtedly part of a wider dialogue. Even in Christianity there are so many different interpretations, the same story manifesting through art, literature and performance; from fish and crosses scratched in caves, renaissance frescoes, Sunday school cartoons, those strange graphics in religious pamphlets and school plays. I love the version of the nativity in the Quran, which has Mary give birth to the prophet, while clinging to a palm tree.

I don’t know about you, but one of the first things I was asked to do at Sunday school was to draw Jesus, which started off abstract and developed over the years into crayon stick people with palm leaves, poster paint crucifixions and pasta shaped ascensions. We’ve come an awful long way in two thousand years with this particular story, considering only half a century ago re-versions by writers such as Robert Graves, Nikos Kazantzakis et al were met with horror and derision; it’s only forty years since The Life of Brian upset Malcolm Muggeridge and the Archbishop of York. I find Michael Palin’s visible pain at being told the film is irreligious during that debate very identifiable. For me, a sense of irreverence is its own reverie.

In ‘Autophagy’, I’ve tried to create my own Marian theology, based on tracing a matriarchal line of caregiving. By looking at the other women in the bible, such as Sarah and Hagar, allowed me to draw lines of comparison between different aspects of female experience. Sarah had her own miraculous conception, and, like Elizabeth’s, it went beyond biological expectation. God blesses Sarah but he also causes a rupture between her and her handmaiden Hagar. Women’s relationships are footnotes in the bible and the more we think about them the less clear cut the stories are and the less suitable for the simplistic moral guidance deployed by some believers.

© Sarah Cave & Rupert Loydell 2020
14th January 2020

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