Poetry editor’s column responding to readers on Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle’, Bach, Hesse, Palestinian poet Haia Mohammed and Una Marson, considering anger, death and the values of peace.
Poetic Responses – Sofia 157
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Poetic Responses
A columnist responds to readers’ poetry suggestions, from Dylan Thomas and Hesse to Palestinian poet Haia Mohammed and Una Marson. He considers anger, facing death, and turning anger into words and deeds that serve peace.
Poem: The Traveller
A poem about a woman who weeps silently for the whole of a train journey, releasing grief for a child’s death and funeral, and arrives with dry eyes.
Don Cupitt at 90
A tribute to Don Cupitt on his ninetieth birthday and the Sea of Faith’s fortieth anniversary, recalling Hugh Dawes, solar ethics and Cupitt’s late writing on death and humanity’s future.
A Penn’orth. Fear
A Penn’orth column examines fear as a basic emotion. It covers panic spread through stories and social media, the real dread felt by people in poverty, existential fear of extinction behind belief in an afterlife, and biblical awe.
Linda Woodhead interviews Don Cupitt
Linda Woodhead interviews Don Cupitt on his career and thought: religious language as ethical and life-shaping, extinction at death, transience, and expected civilisational collapse.
Review: The Fox, the Whale and the Wardrobe by Dónall Dempsey
Review of Dónall Dempsey’s collection The Fox, the Whale and the Wardrobe, poems of Irish childhood, grief and joy. The reviewer notes the poet’s lack of religious belief and his whimsical, conversational voice.
As I Please: John Pearson says goodbye
In his final As I Please column, John Pearson reflects on saying goodbye: a last visit to an elderly great-aunt, wartime songs, famous last words and a comic parody of Brief Encounter.
The Body of Christ II: Death and Resurrection
Stephen Mitchell reflects on Jesus’s death and resurrection, arguing the risen body is a literary creation and that dying well matters more than debates about an afterlife. He also criticises ‘celebration of life’ funerals.
Pietà
A poem on Mary holding the dead body of her adult son, recalling their estrangement and the child she once dried and held.