Expressing faith through poetry
For National Poetry Day, Rhiannon Grant collects some Quaker poetry and suggests where to find more.
Quaker poetry has a long tradition. Despite the suspicions of the first generation of Quakers, who were concerned that music and art might distract from focussing on God, Quaker writers and speakers have always used some of the tools of poetry: dramatic and memorable images, strong turns of phrase, musical patterns of sound, and intertextual references such as call backs to the Bible and other works.
There may be something particularly helpful to Quakers in poetry: Quaker poets
Philip Gross and Laurence Lerner suggest in a reflective article that "Poetry, with its pushing of language to the point of breakdown (a process both playful and serious) can point, like Quaker worship, into the wordlessness beyond."
Apprentice to connectivity
This push through words into silence can take the form of connection with the more-than-human nature world, as in this extract from Tutelage by Quaker Lucy Aphramor:
I want to apprentice to connectivity, permeability, teeming dirt
I want skills against taxonomy
teach us to feel in ways that will kill and birth us cracked shell
teach us to grieve in ways that will kill and birth us cracked seed
teach us to love in ways that will kill and birth us
cracked shell cracked seed cracked husk cracked open to knowing
to being known to being lived through ak/new
Our religion strong and plain
Much further back, Mary Mollineux (1651–1696) wrote many poems which academic Hilary Hinds has described as "a visible—and audible—act of devotion". These were often written as private documents, such as letters, and were published after her death along with testimonies to the grace of God in her life.
Here, for example, are some lines from The conclusion of a letter to cousin F.R. which explore how her faith separates her from the world's agenda:
Ne'er let the prospect of a great estate
Dazzle those eyes, which I presum'd of late,
Could from on high, with brave disdain, look down
On this world's fading glory…
Ah, let enough suffice! Could poverty
Be advocate, 'twould please excuse for thee:
But if we grasp at riches that are vain,
Then how is our religion strong and plain?
(Read in full in a digital scanned copy: Fruits of retirement page 133.)
In deeper reverence
Perhaps the best known Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier's work has been brought to many through the use of poems as hymns. In particular, Dear Lord and Father of mankind, part of a longer poem, is, according to Hymnary.com which indexes them, one of the 250 texts most often published in modern hymnals. This may help to explain why it was this song to which Quakers turned when a technical problem at Britain Yearly Meeting earlier this year meant there was a need to fill a space – it also helps that, whether or not we are comfortable singing in worship, many Quakers will resonate with its desire that God help us:
in purer lives Thy service find,
in deeper rev'rence, praise.
More and more
Many other Quakers also write poetry. In 1896 Evelyn Noble Armitage found 65 people to include in The Quaker poets of Great Britain and Ireland. In 2013 Stevie Krayer and RV Bailey gathered more recent contributions in A speaking silence. Quaker magazine Friends Journal has a whole department for poetry, published free online each month. And the Quaker Bookshop stocks many Quaker poets and poets of interest to Quakers.
Perhaps this flowering of words also points us back towards silence. Philip Gross has also suggested that Quakerism and poetry are connected through "a style of attentiveness, akin to listening".
For me there is also something in the relationships, sometimes helpful, sometimes tense, between words and silence, between nature and culture, between new experience and long tradition. In looking at Quaker poems, we are exploring how someone tried to express their unique perspective, unexpected and fresh and at the same time replying to many similar attempts in the past.
A seasoned concern
To add my own little bit to this tradition, I'll finish this brief tour with a poem I wrote during Yearly Meeting in May this year. Quakers use the phrase 'Gospel order' to describe the connection we find between spiritual experience and good governance.
Gospel Order is not a measure tape
Gospel Order is a well-worn shoe
Gospel Order is a journey shared
Gospel Order is a pool of water
Gospel Order is criss-crossing waves
Gospel Order is daring to love hard
Gospel Order is love drowning shame
Gospel Order is difficult comrades
Gospel Order is building a fence
Gospel Order is timber stacked to dry
Gospel Order is salt, heat, and yeast
