Episode 103 • 1st June 2023 • The Living Church Podcast • The Living Church
It is a delight to be with you in the first week of Pentecost.
Many of you are artists, musicians, writers, lovers of beauty, literature, good poetry, a good pint or pipe. The combination of art, beauty, and Christian life is a fascinating and life-giving one, and one that’s closely related to the work of Pentecost: the renewal of creation, and the bringing of everything good into God’s own eternity.
Today’s guest is poet, priest, musician and motocyclist, Malcolm Guite. Though we had him on to talk about the threads of relationship between poetry and Pentecost, our conversation took us to many unplanned places, while still returning, interestingly, to the themes of Pentecost: language and breath, moving from isolation to integration, and how the creation itself, “undersprung” with music, longs to be tuned back to the note that Jesus played perfectly, once for all.
The Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and scholar. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, and associate chaplain of St. Edward King and Martyr, Cambridge.
Please check out his books of poetry, they are rich mines of devotion and enjoyment, as well as his books on faith and theology (see the link below).
As we go from the Tower of Babel to Beowulf, from Keats and Shelley to singing in tongues, we hope you enjoy the conversation.