Download or read book R S Thomas to Rowan Williams written by M. Wynn Thomas and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book R S Thomas to Rowan Williams written by M. Wynn Thomas and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Headwaters written by Rowan Williams and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book R S Thomas written by M. Wynn Thomas and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Man Who Went into the West written by Byron Rogers and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2007-07-20 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Frequencies of God written by Carys Walsh and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2020-08-30 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the season of Advent, the coming of Christ is imminent, and following the contours of the season leads through a rich time of preparation for God-with-us in the Incarnation. R. S. Thomas, a poet of waiting and anticipation, can be a profound guide for this season. His spiritual and poetic trajectory of discovering the presence of God - divine ‘frequencies’ - even in apparent absence, can help lead us into an Advent landscape of surrender, open-hearted discovery, epiphany and encounter. This collection of 28 reflections on Thomas’s poetry travels through the season, and follows one of the traditional patterns of themes explored in each Sunday of Advent: a Carmelite pattern of waiting, accepting, journeying and birthing.

Download or read book Etched by Silence written by Ronald Stuart Thomas and published by Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd. This book was released on 2013-06-28 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of poems by Wales' most famous poet-priest, R S Thomas, is interspersed with short reflections and questions for exploration that connect the timeless poetry to the landscape that inspired it. Originally produced locally for visitors to the North Wales village and church where R S Thomas was the parish priest, its appeal extends to all who know and love the raw honesty and sparse, striking style of the poetry, and whose own faith and questions are mirrored in it. Aberdaron still welcomes streams of visitors, R S Thomas aficionados and pilgrims en route to the nearby holy island of Bardsey. This book brings the poetry alive in a fresh way and provides a pilgrim guide to the locality, along with reflections that enable armchair readers everywhere to enter more deeply into the world of the poems. All royalties will continue to go to maintaining the church at Aberdaron.

Download or read book Christian Imagination in Poetry and Polity written by Rowan Williams, and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Dostoevsky written by Rowan Williams and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rowan Williams explores the intricacies of speech, fiction, metaphor, and iconography in the works of one of literature's most complex and most misunderstood, authors. Williams' investigation focuses on the four major novels of Dostoevsky's maturity (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Devils, and The Brothers Karamazov). He argues that understanding Dostoevsky's style and goals as a writer of fiction is inseparable from understanding his religious commitments. Any reader who enters the rich and insightful world of Williams' Dostoevsky will emerge a more thoughtful and appreciative reader for it.

Download or read book Jesus in the Theology of Rowan Williams written by Brett Gray and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brett Gray traces the portrayal of Christ that emerges throughout Williams' diverse writings, including in his engagements with literature and philosophy. What emerges is a vision of Jesus that grows from the roots of the Christian tradition, but is pronounced in a contemporary idiom and sensitive to modern concerns. Although attentive to the broad sweep of the Christian tradition, Williams' Christology is also seen in this book to be a particular British artefact, shaped in dialogue with thinkers such as Donald MacKinnon and Gillian Rose. What is ultimately brought to the surface in this work is the profoundly hopeful, if frequently under-pronounced, eschatology underlying Williams' Christology. Jesus is the “last word”, changing creation's possibilities and summoning it into an endless and vivifying journey.

Download or read book The Poems of Rowan Williams written by Rowan Williams and published by Carcanet. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I dislike the idea of being a religious poet. I would prefer to be a poet for whom religious things mattered intensely. In the poems collected in this book, Rowan Williams writes of many things. He visits the Holy Land, commemorates the deaths of parents and close friends, explores elements of ancient Celtic culture; poems are inspired by works of art, landscapes rural and urban, and historical figures from Tolstoy to Simone Weil. What connects poem to poem is the poet's vividly sensual language, his formal mastery, and how he can address, specifically and particularly, what matters most intensely. Earth is a hard text to read', writes Welsh poet Waldo Williams in a poem translated here. For Rowan Williams, this very reading is the task of the poet.

Download or read book Brittle with Relics written by Richard King and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brittle with Relics is a landmark history of the people of Wales during a period of great national change.'Richly humane, viscerally political, generously multi-voiced, Brittle with Relics is oral history at its revelatory best.'DAVID KYNASTON'Fascinating.' OBSERVER'Powerful.' LITERARY REVIEW'Inspired.' GUARDIANBrittle with Relics is a vital history of Wales undergoing some of the country's most seismic and traumatic events: the disasters of Aberfan and Tryweryn; the rise of the Welsh language movement; the Miners' Strike and its aftermath; and the narrow vote in favour of partial devolution.Drawing upon the voices of its inhabitants - includin Neil Kinnock, Rowan Williams, Leanne Wood, Gruff Rhys, Michael Sheen, Nicky Wire, Sian James, language activists, members of former mining communities and many more - this is a vivid portrait of a nation determined to survive, while maintaining the hope that Wales will one day thrive on its own terms.'Passionate.' HISTORY TODAY'Compels attention.' IRISH TIMES'Superb.' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A testament to the brutal circumstances that bonded the communities of Wales into a new polity for the 21st century.'GRUFF RHYS'This book is a guide to remembering who we can be when we work together.'GWENNO SAUNDERS'An essential telling of Welshness that contains a powerful reflection of Englishness, too.'EMMA WARREN

Download or read book R S Thomas written by Daniel Westover and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) is the most recognizable literary figure in twentieth-century Wales. His controversial politics and public personality made him a cultural icon during his life, and the merits of his poetry have continued to be debated in the years after his death. Yet these debates have too-often circled familiar ground, returning to the assumed personality of the poet or to the received narrative of his experience. Even the best studies have focused almost exclusively on ideas and themes. As a result, the poetry itself has frequently been marginalized. This book argues that Thomas’s reputation must be grounded in poetry, not personality. Unlike traditional literary biography, which combines historical facts with the conventions of narrative in an attempt to understand the life of a literary figure, this stylistic biography focuses on the essential relationship between the maker and the made object, giving priority to the latter. R. S. Thomas began his career by writing sugary, derivative lyrics inspired by Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, yet he ended it as a form-seeking experimentalist. This study guides the reader through that journey, tracing Thomas’s stylistic evolution over six decades. In so doing, it asserts a priority: not to look at poetry, as many have, as a way of affirming existing notions about an iconic R. S. Thomas, but to come to terms with the tensions within him as they reveal themselves in the tensions – rhythmic, linguistic, structural – of the poetry itself.

Download or read book A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry 1960 2015 written by Wolfgang Gortschacher and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-12-21 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and scholarly review of contemporary British and Irish Poetry With contributions from noted scholars in the field, A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960-2015 offers a collection of writings from a diverse group of experts. They explore the richness of individual poets, genres, forms, techniques, traditions, concerns, and institutions that comprise these two distinct but interrelated national poetries. Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companion to Literature and Culture series, this book contains a comprehensive survey of the most important contemporary Irish and British poetry. The contributors provide new perspectives and positions on the topic. This important book: Explores the institutions, histories, and receptions of contemporary Irish and British poetry Contains contributions from leading scholars of British and Irish poetry Includes an analysis of the most prominent Irish and British poets Puts contemporary Irish and British poetry in context Written for students and academics of contemporary poetry, A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960-2015 offers a comprehensive review of contemporary poetry from a wide range of diverse contributors.

Download or read book R S Thomas written by Ronald Stuart Thomas and published by Poetry Wales Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published to celebrate the centenary of R. S. Thomas' birth, this volume draws together 52 poems (4 previously unpublished) by Thomas to his wife, the distinguished artist Mildred E. Eldridge - known as Elsi - from early meditations on their relationship to the elegies following her death. Foreword by Rowan Williams.

Download or read book A Century of Poetry written by Rowan Williams and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘All serious lovers of poetry will want this book.’ A. N. Wilson All good poetry has the power to transport and transform us, to inspire and challenge us, to comfort and heal us, and to hold up a mirror to the world around us. In A Century of Poetry, Rowan Williams invites you to reflect with him on 100 poems from the past 100 years – poems with an originality and depth that can impel you to search your heart, and to explore your own experience and emotions at a deeper level. Featuring the work of both famous and lesser-known poets, from different faiths, languages and cultures, A Century of Poetry gives you a fresh perspective on works you may be familiar with, as well as introducing you to poems you’ll be pleased to discover for the first time – or perhaps discover again. These meditations, by a writer who is both a poet and a theologian, will open new doors into the experience of reading and absorbing great poetry, highlighting the ways in which their language and imagery can touch unfamiliar places in the heart and enliven the lifelong adventure of spiritual growth and exploration.

Download or read book Cursed Britain written by Thomas Waters and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-07 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of how witchcraft and black magic have survived, through the modern era and into the present dayCursed Britain unveils the enduring power of witchcraft, curses and black magic in modern times. Few topics are so secretive or controversial. Yet, whether in the 1800s or the early 2000s, when disasters struck or personal misfortunes mounted, many Britons found themselves believing in things they had previously dismissed – dark supernatural forces.Historian Thomas Waters here explores the lives of cursed or bewitched people, along with the witches and witch-busters who helped and harmed them. Waters takes us on a fascinating journey from Scottish islands to the folklore-rich West Country, from the immense territories of the British Empire to metropolitan London. We learn why magic caters to deep-seated human needs but see how it can also be abused, and discover how witchcraft survives by evolving and changing. Along the way, we examine an array of remarkable beliefs and rituals, from traditional folk magic to diverse spiritualities originating in Africa and Asia.This is a tale of cynical quacks and sincere magical healers, depressed people and furious vigilantes, innocent victims and rogues who claimed to possess evil abilities. Their spellbinding stories raise important questions about the state’s role in regulating radical spiritualities, the fragility of secularism and the true nature of magic.