I’m sharing this and detailed descriptions of other groups as a resource for others wanting to lead something similar.
Dates: eight Thursdays between May 2025 and February 2026, 7.30-8.30pm
Location: Online via Zoom
The book
This edition of the Slow Book Group did something a little different, turning for a season to poetry. We explored and reflected on poems drawn from an anthology compiled specially for the group.
While planning the sessions, I emailed previous Slow Book Group participants asking for suggestions for the anthology, that in different ways speak to contemplative prayer and deepening our relationship with the Divine. I suggested sending one or two possible poems – at least the titles, but if possible an accurate text – but couldn’t guarantee to include them all in the anthology, or that they will be chosen to be read in the group.
In the end I received very few suggestions, so had quite a free rein to choose from the very long list of poems I had noted over time. In particular I limited the numbers of metaphysicals (to one) and other white men to ensure a mix of voices across centuries, genders and cultures. So the anthology comprised the following 16 poems. Please contact me if you would like the pdf.
| St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) | Coloquio amoroso |
| George Herbert (1593-1633) | The Hold-fast |
| Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) | A Birthday |
| Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) | The Starlight Night |
| T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) | from Four Quartets: Little Gidding |
| R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) | The Bright Field |
| Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) | No Visions or Prayers |
| Derek Walcott (1930-2017) | Love After Love |
| Ann Lewin | Disclosure |
| Wendell Berry (1934-) | How to Be a Poet (to remind myself) |
| Mary Oliver (1935-2019) | I Happened To Be Standing |
| Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) | blessing the boats |
| Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) | Postscript |
| Louise Glück (1943-2023) | Vespers [In your extended absence, you permit me] |
| David Whyte (1955-) | Stone (Thobar Phádraig) |
| Mirabai Starr (1961-) | A Radiant Sanctuary |
Overview
As usual, we notified the preceding group of the next book group a little in advance, and then publicised it to the wider Cathedral community via the monthly news and weekly sheet.
For those who had not joined a Slow Book Group before, I shared some thoughts and suggestions for slow reading, explaining that the Group’s purpose is to gain from books and poems a deeper understanding of our walk with God and through that to deepen our own prayer lives and relationships with God.
During the session we used the practice of Lectio Divina – slow reading and pondering over the text – as another way of listening to and praying the poem, then spend time sharing in small groups and the whole.
I led the first session, then invited others who would like to volunteer to choose a poem and offer dates to lead. As guidance, I provided information on the pattern of the session and a template script for the Lectio Divina.
I and the volunteer leader met briefly in advance of the session to go over the poem and plan the session content. Then we emailed the group members a week ahead with a reminder of the text, some questions to consider while reading including one or two poems to read alongside (which may also have been from the anthology), and the Zoom details. We also asked for another volunteer to read out the poem during the guided meditation.
The sessions lasted about an hour and followed the same pattern each month:
- Gathering silence
- Short introduction to the poet and poem
- Guided meditation using the form of Lectio Divina, including two readings of the poem by the leader and the second volunteer
- Small break-out groups pondering 2/3 questions specific to the poem, chosen in advance by the leader, plus the general question: What insights did you glean from reading the poem or the Lectio into your prayer and relationship with God? This was less a head-based discussion, more speaking from the heart to lead us deeper into the poem and prayer.
- Return to the larger group with anything to bring back and share, or further reflections. Again, this was speaking from the heart, not a discussion.
- Close with 3 minutes of silence and Grace
We encouraged participants to continue to sit with the poem for a few more days, allowing what had been shared in the group to sink in, before turning to the next month’s poem. Then after one week, we followed up each session with an email reminder of some of what we shared and/or my further thoughts, and information about the next month.
The group was originally intended to run for six sessions between May and November 2025, but as we had some poems remaining the the anthology and there was a desire to continue, we also met in January and February 2026.
May 2025
About the poem
Poem: “Disclosure” by Ann Lewin
From the Canterbury Press website: “Ann Lewin is an accomplished poet who is much in demand as a retreat leader. She was a secondary school teacher (RE and English) for 27 years, and later Welfare Advisor for International Students at the University of Southampton. She has also worked tutoring ordinands at Sarum College.”
This was a short, modern, accessible poem to start, drawing a parallel between prayer and waiting for a kingfisher to appear. We suggested reading it slowly a number of times and pondering:
- How does the poem reflect your practice of prayer, and your attitude in waiting?
- How does it reflect your engagement within nature?
- You may also like to read it alongside “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above, with the addition of a short welcome go-round at the beginning, each sharing our name; our city/town/village as a way of anchoring ourselves together; and one word that we brought with us that evening.
We also used one further question back together in the large group: Once you have seen a kingfisher, how does that affect your prayer?
Follow-up material
The poem appears in the chapter “Material for use in a Quiet Garden” in Seasons of Grace by Ann Lewin. Here is an excerpt:
“Bird watching has taught me that all is gift. I may go out hoping to see a particular bird – but it may not be in evidence. I can’t control the movement of the birds. And if I am too intent on seeing one particular bird, I may miss a lot of other things that are around. Prayer is like that…
“So it’s all gift. The work we have to do is be prepared, in the right habitat, with the right disposition. And then we have to respond, with thanksgiving for God’s amazing love which cares even for the sparrows, endangered species that they are.”
Here is a fairly in-depth response, also referencing Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, and T. S. Eliot.
The play of God’s presence/absence is reminiscent of Richard Skinner’s short poem from “Echoes of Eckhart”.
A reflection from one of the group, prompted by a question in the large group: This made me see the poem in a new light. I have always read it through the lens of contemplative prayer, but now there is also the possibility of the lens of intercessory prayer. Both nature and society are red in tooth and claw, and we with the Psalmist are watching and waiting and asking “How long, O Lord, how long?” (eg Psalm 6,13). Unlike the other Gospel writers, John did not include the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. For him, the flash of glory in Jesus occurred at his handing over in Gethsemane and when he was lifted on the Cross… where, according to Mark, he cried “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is when God seems most absent, that God is most with us.
June
About the poem
Poem: “The Bright Field” by RS Thomas
R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) is recognised as one of the leading poets of modern Wales. Many of his poems set his farming characters against the bleak and forbidding landscape of Wales, focusing on the difficulties of rural existence. As an Anglican priest, his poetry is imbued with a consistently religious theme.
“The Bright Field” is a deceptively simple sonnet, in which the poet likens the experience of seeing a field temporarily illuminated by sunlight, to the possibility of a life-changing encounter with the holy, if only we turn aside and notice.
Suggestions for mulling over while reading and re-reading the poem:
- How does the poem help you to reflect on the choices you make in your own life? What prevents you from or helps you to “turn aside”?
- How does Thomas’s treatment of time encourage you to reflect on how you perceive time in your daily life?
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above.
Follow-up material
More about RS Thomas and his poems:
- Poetry Foundation website
- All Poetry website
- Long blog post, going in to some detail
- Lecture by Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford
- Obituary in The Guardian
- RS Thomas Poetry Festival
- Reflection on attending the 2024 Festival
A reflection from one of the group: Brightness does not have to be visual. For me it is often communicated through the medium of music. The numinous can be directly experienced through music. This can happen at unexpected times, but also in the Cathedral through a Mass setting or the glory of a hymn or organ voluntary. I can find myself replaying it in my mind to recapture the ‘brightness’. A sort of celestial earworm.
Māori whakataukī or ‘proverb’ – Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua. I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.
July
About the poem
Poem: “Love After Love” by Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott was a poet and playwright from Saint Lucia in the eastern Caribbean, and later lived also in New York and Boston. In 1992 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. “Methodism and spirituality played a significant role from the beginning in Walcott’s work. He commented: ‘I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.’ … Many of [his plays] address, either directly or indirectly, the liminal status of the West Indies in the post-colonial period. Through poetry he also explores the paradoxes and complexities of this legacy.“ — sourced from Wikipedia
Suggestions for mulling over while reading and re-reading the poem:
- St Catherine of Genoa once proclaimed “My deepest me is God!” What does the poem tell you about the relationship between your false self in need of redemption and your true deep self?
- How does the poem’s use of material things help you to reflect on your life and life of prayer?
- You may also like to read it alongside “Love (III)” by George Herbert
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above.
Follow-up material
More about Derek Walcott and some of his poems on the Poetry Foundation website.
Unfortunately I can’t now find the source of this quote about the poem:
The closing line—‘Feast on your life’—is a triumphant call to celebrate yourself, not as someone broken or incomplete, but as someone whole, worthy, and deeply known. It’s a poem that doesn’t just comfort—it liberates.
More suggestion for poems to read alongside:
- “The Guest House” by Rumi
- “When we are weak” by RS Thomas
More about the true and false self:
- Some background and theory
- One meditation from Richard Rohr and another
An article on St Clare and her use of the mirror in her writings.
2 Corinthians 3:18:
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
from Zephaniah 3.14,17,18:
“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! …
The Lord, your God, is in your midst … he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”
September
About the poem
Poem: “I Happened To Be Standing” by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) was an American poet celebrated for her luminous reflections on nature, solitude, and the spiritual dimensions of everyday life. Her work, often rooted in the landscapes of Ohio and Cape Cod, invites readers to pause and observe the quiet miracles of the natural world. With a style marked by clarity and accessibility, Oliver earned both the Pulitzer Prize and the US National Book Award.
Suggestions for mulling over while reading and re-reading the poem:
- Mary Oliver uses vivid imagery, such as the wren singing and the sunflowers blazing. How do these images speak to you? What emotions or thoughts do they evoke?
- What do you think the poet means by “a condition I can’t really call being alive”? Reflect on this line and consider what it means to truly be alive. How does this line challenge or affirm your own experiences?
- The poet describes standing outside with a notebook, observing the world around her. How does this act of stillness and observation resonate with you? How might it relate to your own spiritual practices?
- You may also like to read it alongside the following two poems:
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above.
Follow-up material
Mary Oliver gave interviews very rarely. This conversation on the On Being podcast, in which she reads some of her poetry was a gem.
Re the wonder of children, you might like “The Minister for Exams” by Brian Patten.
On the subject of looking and wonder, here are a couple of excerpts from Esther de Waal’s books “Lost in Wonder” and “The White Stone” about her practice of using a magnifying glass. I have a magnifying app on my phone!
October
About the poem
Poem: “No Visions or Prayers ” by Elizabeth Jennings
Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) was born in Boston, Lincolnshire but moved to Oxford at the age of six where she lived for the rest of her life. Her work explores faith (her Catholicism provides an important theme), nature, and the interior life. Her understated and precise style favoured clarity and directness over elaborate or obscure metaphors. This commitment to accessibility did not preclude emotional depth, and her poems often contemplate grief, loneliness, and the search for meaning in a world that can often feel alienating.
Suggestions for mulling over while reading and re-reading the poem:
- How can Christian prayer exist without words or feelings, and God be at work even when we don’t hear a response?
- If visions and prayers are absent, where do we encounter the sacred?
- How do the ordinary and the Holy relate and our lives become prayers?
- How do I relate to feeling baffled, trust God, and take risks in faith?
- You may also like to read it alongside the Wendell Berry “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)”, also in the anthology
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above.
Follow-up material
More about Elizabeth Jennings, and some of her poems:
- On the Poetry Archive including recordings of two poems made in her last years
- On All Poetry including many more poems
- The Life and Mystery of Poet Elizabeth Jennings
Some of the reflections during the session turned on the word ‘pursuing’. It seems to me that by dint of joining and participating in this group, we are all pursuing something.
We also spoke of the ‘ordinary’. A few things sprang to mind:
- Chapters 31 to 34 of the Rule of St Benedict could be thought of as providing guidance on how to approach the stuff of life and attend to things. For example in Chapter 31, “regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar.”
- Brother Lawrence in “The Practice of the Presence of God” said “It is not necessary to have important things to do. I flip my little omelette in the frying pan for the love of God.”
- George Herbert “The Elixir”
- Simone Weil in “Waiting for God” asserted that the practice of attention as open waiting is fundamental for both ethics and spirituality… and it can be cultivated as a habit, practised even in doing geometry homework.
- Barbara Brown Taylor, the Episcopalian priest: “Sometimes, when people ask me about my prayer life, I describe hanging laundry on the line.”
- And you could look up Kathleen Norris “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and ‘Women’s Work’ ”
November
About the poem
Poem: “Coloquio amoroso” by St Teresa of Ávila
Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), was a Carmelite nun and Spanish mystic. During the Counter-Reformation, she became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite Orders of both women and men with the later support of John of the Cross.
“Coloquio amoroso” in the original Spanish and another, more literal, translation. The translation in the anthology was by Arthur Symons (1865-1945). Note the switch in the order of verses 3 and 4.
Suggestions for mulling over while reading and re-reading the poem:
- In v1, Teresa asks God a long question, and God responds in v2 with two more questions, leading to a back & forth, Q & A. What are you asking God? What is God asking you? How are you replying?
- “Coloquio amoroso” could translate as “Love’s conversation”, or a conversation that is… loving? tender? affectionate? amorous? What is the tone of your conversation with God?
- What does it mean to keep turning to love?
- You may also like to read the last poem in the anthology, “A Radiant Sanctuary” by Mirabai Starr, from the introduction to her translation of Teresa’s “Interior Castle”. How does this help you understand what building a “nest” for God might mean?
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above.
Follow-up material
More about St Teresa, and links to her poems.
The hymn “O love that will not let me go”, which was mentioned in the larger group.
And because someone said that they enjoyed meeting God in the ordinary in the Mirabai Starr, a reminder of the ‘ordinary’ from the follow-up to September.
January 2026
About the poem
Poem: “Stone (Thobar Phádraig)” by David Whyte
David Whyte is the author of many books of poetry and prose. He grew up with a strong, imaginative influence from his Irish mother among the hills and valleys of his father’s Yorkshire. He now makes his home in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. He holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has worked as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands.
Suggestions for mulling over while reading and re-reading the poem:
- How might stone be a mirror and a metaphor for God?
- Where do you find such mirrors and how do you experience gazing?
- How have you been weathered in your faith?
- You may also like to read “Tobar Phádraic” by David Whyte
Tobar Phádraic (and variant spellings) means St Patrick’s Holy Well. The well/s referred to in the poems is/are probably in Galway or County Clare or both. Listen to David Whyte reading “Stone (Thobar Phádraig)”.
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above.
Follow-up material
David Whyte shares many poems and videos on his Facebook page.
I heartily recommend this conversation on the On Being podcast, and there are more of his readings linked.
Some of my reflections: I looked again at the structure of “Stone (Thobar Phádraig)”, itself formed in the shape of a stone. There are only two sentences. The first line and the first sentence are one, the surface of a mirror or a reflecting pool. Beneath is the heft of the second sentence, the whole of the rest of the poem.
I was also struck by the many ways the poem speaks of looking and seeing – looking into a mirror and seeing yourself looking back; gazing into moving waters and seeing the slow light; looking into immovability; looking back; and finally finding. The image of the mirror was central to St Clare’s spirituality:
- An exploration of her expression of this spirituality in letters to her sisters and to Agnes of Prague
- Links to Clare’s letters
Then, “Stone” takes the reader through increasingly slow timescales – when even light is slow; moving and flowing water; geologic time of plate tectonics, and weathering rock. There is great wisdom of weathering – instead of giving in to the need to leave, allowing yourself to stay and be weathered by whatever comes, being willing to be touched.
Here is “Weathering” by Fleur Adcock on “The Marginalian” website. She is from New Zealand, but David Whyte claims she wrote it while spending some time in the Lake District. I wonder whether Whyte wrote “Stone” as a partial response to Adcock, but I don’t know the dates of either. I also recommend spending time with “The Marginalian”.
Reflections from a participant: I found the poem wove its way into my heart and I woke up on Friday with the words ‘stability and steadfastness’ in my mind. It felt like it was giving me courage to be more firmly grounded here, where I am, to be weathered and to be alive in this place, knowing that I am held in the love of God.
It also reminded me of a children’s book called “A pebble in my pocket” by Meredith Hooper, which I found inspiring. It was the incredible journey of the pebble through millions of years which brought to mind ‘the ancient of days’.
I also appreciated the thought that perhaps we weren’t meant to understand the poem but sit with it. Probably true of life and faith too.
… and she also shared this lovely mailing from Abbey of the Arts.
February
About the poem
Poem: “blessing the boats” by Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) was an American poet, writer, and educator. She was born in New York and grew up in Buffalo. She served as poet laureate for the state of Maryland from 1979-1985 and was a distinguished professor of humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. A prolific and widely respected poet, Lucille Clifton was the author of several books of poetry including “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000”, which won the National Book Award. Her work emphasizes endurance and strength through adversity, focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life. Some quotes about her:
- “One always feels the looming humaneness around Lucille Clifton’s poems—it is a moral quality that some poets have and some don’t.”
- Clifton’s poetic scope transcends the black experience “to embrace the entire world, human and non-human, in the deep affirmation she makes in the teeth of negative evidence.”
- She is noted for saying much with few words: “We see a poetry so pared down that its spaces take on substance, become a shaping presence as much as the words themselves.”
Suggestions for mulling over while reading and re-reading the poem:
- How do you receive this blessing? What blessing would you offer?
- What do boats and sailing, tide, wind and water mean for you as metaphors?
- Unknown origin: “A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for“
- Breton Fisherman’s prayer: “O God, Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small”
- Alongside the poem, you may also like to read “Postscript” by Seamus Heaney, from the anthology
Structure
We followed the structure outlined above.
Follow-up material
More about Lucille Clifton’s life and work, with more of her poems
Here’s an episode of the glorious Poetry Unbound podcast in which Pádraig Ó Tuama reflects on Clifton’s “song at midnight”.
Some of my further reflections on “sail through this to that”. Clifton leaves the meanings of “this” and “that” entirely open. Depending on circumstances, it may be from fear to hope, weakness to strength, bad to good, beyond whatever is troubling to calmer seas. Or it may be completely other than what might have been expected. And Clifton uses the word “through” — not float over, or skirt around, but sail through. The key for me is to hold on to those words of Jesus to the fearful disciples in their small boat: “Take heart. I am. Do not be afraid.” (Mark 6.45-52 and parallels)
And finally, for some light-ish relief
- Once upon a time during a week on Iona I set the Shipping Forecast to Anglican chant (pdf)
- The origination of the idea with the Master Singers
- And the current Shipping Forecast