Inspiration and sustenance for the journey through Lent

Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, is the most generous of readers and writers. He shares his enthusiasm for the work of others with intellectual observation and infectious warmth. In Hearing God in Poetry (SPCK, £9.99; Tablet price, £7.99), Harries has selected a poem that imparts something vital for every day in the journey through Lent to Easter, and has added to each his own wider and personal reflections. The book is divided into weeks, beginning with “Preparation” and going through stages such as “Glory in the Ordinary” and “Being Fully Human”, and culminating in “New Life”. For Ash Wednesday, he starts with Thomas Hardy’s “Surview”, a painful moment of awakening conscience: “‘You taught not that which you set about,’/Said my own voice talking to me.” The reader will find old favourites (George Herbert, John Donne and Seamus Heaney, for example) as well as new voices. Not all the poets are orthodox Christians (D.H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman) but every poem moves the reader onward, each week bringing fresh insight which gradually opens up understanding. And the rewards of Easter Week include Malcolm Guite’s lovely “O Sapientia”: “Come hidden wisdom, come with all you bring, /Come to me now, disguised as everything.” Which makes this book a beautiful circle of revelation.