Sounding Heaven and Earth, Malcolm Guite
/REVIEWER: Ali Hull
sounding heaven and earth
BOOK: Sounding Heaven and Earth: A Poet’s Corner Collection
(Canterbury Press, 2023) 162pp, paperback
Subtitled A Poet’s Corner collection, this book is made up of pieces originally published in Guite’s weekly Church Times column.
Around two pages long each, the 76 entries are hard to classify. Some contain poetry, others do not; sometimes the poetry is his, sometimes it isn’t. What marks all of them, though, is a depth of thought, a gentleness and a joy – in the smallest and most mundane of things, as well as the larger and greater.
He may be celebrating being back in his own study, or reflecting on the long service and then passing of the late Queen; or even lamenting the state of the nation or the dangers of climate change – everything is treated with the same sense of wonder. There is an openness here, an acceptance of others with grace and mercy, a deep appreciation of the good in humanity, but also in architecture, in nature, in other authors, poets and individuals, and, above all, in God and his Son.
Guite is an expert in English literature, a priest and a poet, and his passions inform his writing; but his readers don’t have to be equally well-read or erudite. The tone of the book is far more ‘I loved this: maybe you would too.’
For the purpose of this review, I had to read the book more or less in one sitting, and while I enjoyed it, I would have gained much more if I had been able to read it more slowly and more meditatively. It would make a wonderful gift.
Reviewer: Ali Hull has spent nearly thirty years working with words, as a writer, editor and writing coach. Now the Book Editor for Preach magazine, her ‘to be read’ pile is approaching frightening proportions.