The mingled mind of poet and saint

The Oratory of Light: Poems in the Spirit of St Columba by James Harpur (Wild Goose Publications, £7.99; for further information contact.iona.books.com)

A while ago poet Gabriel Fitzmaurice writing in these pages passed on a remark of John F. Deane “that the new Christianity [of today] is to be a daring adventure requiring a new language and a new poetry. This was to be found among others in James Harpur, who gives a heartening lift to those who try to pursue Christ through their daily lives”.

Inspired

In these poems, inspired by the 1,500th anniversary of the birth in 521 of St Columba, James Harpur (a member of Aosdána who lives in west Cork), draws on the often vivid things we find recorded in Adomnan and others, about the saint, his life, his travails and his achievements. Mr Harpur mingles the divine and the natural in a way that certainly captures the inner spirit of the Celtic outlook as expressed in poetry and prayer.

Here is a passage from one poem in this collection, Mr Harpur’s eighth, in which Columba is speaking to Aed, the chief of the Northern Uí Néill:

“If you think poems are just fables

Then why not food…and clothing, too.

The entire world might be a fable

Including you and me…

Wheelwrights and smiths have art

But also poets with their rhymes,

The grace of making poetry

Is the greatest gift of time.”