Poem 17 Katrien is "Falling into Beauty" in South Korea and Beyond

So here's the next poem from the new audio book  - Poem 17 Falling into Beauty.   It's about how we plan the future... or rather, don't.  You can listen here. So where's  the glimmer of safety in the churn? 

It turns out, that the person who will be commenting on Falling into Beauty, is Katrien, my Belgian friend who has suddenly had to move to South Korea with her family, because of her husband's job.

When we are catching up on Face Time, she tells me that some of the changes have surprised her - 

"I can’t recognise anything in the supermarket!  It isn't just the language, (invented by one of their ancient kings) that has been a challenge, but even the packaging is totally unfamiliar.  I go round shaking things – is this rice?  Is this milk? What IS it?   I had to go to six different shops to find the ingredients for one dish I could make for the boys."

I hadn't thought about an entire supermarket of unrecognisable things! But how might this relate to having to fall into beauty?

Katrien: Well, what this poem was for me was a story of falling in love.

Oh really?

Yes, it’s a spiritual journey …about how one has an inner knowledge, but then you have to follow it.  Your sensitivity will lead you,  but you can’t grasp it.  If you take it in your fingers it escapes.

And here in Korea I am having to fall in love with a new beauty too, but it’s hard.  I find my place more easily in nature, hiking.  The scenery in Seoul is just incredible. 

But the culture is SO different and the Koreans are of course fiercely passionate about their culture, because they had so much of it robbed from them in the war with the Japanese. 

Ah yes, you told me that in the 70s they used to be practically  the poorest country in the world, but now they are one of the most economically successful.

That's right,  and they worked for that night and day and they still do. Here, 9 year olds will be doing maths till 10pm every night. They are very aware that this is a fight for survival. They want their culture to survive too.  They have a very rich intellectual history, but they aren’t looking for interaction with other cultures and ideas.  At least that’s the impression I get. We are used to the idea of interaction with other cultures being fertile, but that's not the objective here. 

There is a city called Paju book city, in which 10,000 people work in the publishing industry. It’s been created entirely to preserve their culture.  It’s motto is ‘A city to recover lost humanity” .

It sounds inspiring … but also looks a bit overwhelming.  It’s on such a huge scale.

Yes that’s the thing – most Asian cities we hear about  are international, like Hong Kong, but here it is absolutely Korean. Although  the culture is based on Confusianism and there’s a shrine here where they have spiritual tablets for the ancestors to preserve their spirits in, I sense that it is actually work that is the religion.

My son was at a debate in school about the existence of God.  He came home and said ‘Mum, I lost the debate’.  Out of 20 children he was the only one who believed in God. 

But this isn’t through lack of thinking about things (because they read day and night), it’s more a passionate affirmation of a kind of materialism, whose whole dynamic springs from needing the knowledge and power to compete.

It sounds a bit tiring.  So why did the poem seem relevant to surviving this situation?

Well, the kind of beauty I find there  in the poem - it’s all Holy Spirit. You’re falling into God.

Ah right, so not just into dolphins! I wondered about that!  And then there's another line in the poem I wanted to ask you about.  I wrote  “a world made safe by God”.  At first I wasn't sure whether to leave it in, but then I decided to go with my initial inspiration, because I try to trust my poetic imagination and see what it yeilds. 

Good! You, were right to leave it in,  because for me, especially in my present situation,  this means the world is saved by God, loved by God and when you are in God, you are ultimately free,  whatever your circumstances.

Falling into beauty is finding God’s part for you, and not just the part your culture tells you that you have to play.  Materialism is not a fulfilling life. Without the dimension of depth, your humanity has nowhere to reside.

I had a look at a website on Korean poetry in translation.  I liked this poet - Yun Dong-ju.  He’s also famous for his resistance to Japanese cultural colonialism, it seems.  Poetry is so often a tool of resistance.  

And I am reminded that, somewhat encouragingly, wherever you let poets loose, you are going to find quite a few of them reaching for the stars both within and without.

Prologue by Yun Dong-ju

Until the day I die
I long to have no speck of shame 
when I gaze up toward heaven, 
so I have tormented myself, 
even when the wind stirs the leaves. 
With a heart that sings the stars, 

I will love all dying things. 
And I will walk the way that has been given to me.
Tonight, again, the wind brushes the stars.

서시(序詩)/ 윤동주

죽는 날까지 하늘을 우러러
한 점 부끄럼이 없기를,
잎새에 이는 바람에도
나는 괴로워했다.
별을 노래하는 마음으로
모든 죽어 가는 것을 사랑해야지.
그리고 나한테 주어진 길을
걸어가야겠다.

오늘 밤에도 별이 바람에 스치운다.

“하늘과 바람과 별과 시” (정음사, 1948)

Yun Dong-ju (1917 – 1945) was born in Longjing, Jiandao, in present-day northeastern China. He was known for lyric poetry as well as resistance poetry against Japanese colonialism.


Maybe some of the friends you meet there in Seoul, will be the poets you meet in books, and I suspect you'll also find that some elf friends have indeed been sent down the elven way to meet you, now that you've dared to begin your journey.  

And who knows what you will create or collate, as you integrate all this seemingly alien beauty? 




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If you've enjoyed these this,  you might enjoy these too -

1) The Audio book, out now on Audible for only £5.59 or free if you join Audible.  The only reason it's so cheap is that they price according to length, which isn't too sensible for poetry. However it is the length of 3 albums - at 2 hours and 35 mins.  But it does mean that the book and audio together are very affordable, which was the point of making the audio, so that you could listen and then read if you wanted to remember or study one poem in particular.  You can also listen as you read;

2)  My Poetry and Prosecco night at the St Michael's Festival on 4th October 2018 at 7.30pm for only £12.50 including the Prosecco!  Invite friends and let's have a poetry party with plenty of discussions afterwards.  You can book here - Books will also be available to buy on the night. Places limited.
The Artistic Director of the Festival writes on the Eventbrite page -

"An evening of seemlessly blended sparkle, profundity and joy, with performance poet and inspirational story-teller Sarah de Nordwall, back at the 2018 Festival by popular demand.

Sarah held us spellbound last year with her wisdom and wit, poetry and sheer delight at the universe, and StMaf18 is thrilled she has agreed to come back to charge our glasses for a second time...  " Justin Harmer, Festival Director

You can book here! 

Poems 15 and 16 Tyrrell Hector Anthony, mountains and monsters

Tyrrell!  (Pronounced Tie Rell)

Welcome to England, fresh from Canada!

When you  messaged me from Canada, I think you'd just left your job on the railways in the Rocky mountains.  It sounded like you were looking for more than just a change of scene. After all, the scenery must be pretty amazing from those trains in the Rockies. 

Sure,  you can look out and see elk, moose and bears…It’s really beautiful.

So you’re not regretting being here in Victoria, London? 

Well, to be honest, I thought it was time for a real pilgrimage.  Like Bilbo Baggins, it was hard to leave, but I needed to do it. 

So it looks as though the poems that have come to you today are quite appropriate then?  'I will go out now' and 'I must leave you'

Let’s have a listen…  to the first one. 

So yes, these lines especially  

'and the straw we would have spun to gold, is straw still at the last, and breaks in my hand'  ..I really relate to that because there comes a time of recognising that you are truncated. Life might have been good, but it isn't  making you a better person.   I know I was repressing my desires for my dreams, just for the sake of just making a good social image, You can end up feeling like a zombie.. the living dead. 

Did you know that zombie walks are really popular now? And growing? A poet friend of mine Sarah Fordham  told me there’s a huge Zombie Walk gathering in Crouch End.. maybe it’s an image of a contemporary experience - lots of people staggering along in a group, but all alone.  There was an really perceptive talk by Symbolic World on that very topic – I think you’d be fascinated. 

The weekend after I heard the talk on youtube, I was on the pier in Brighton.  And there was a booth with a father with his little curly haired daughter (who was about 3 or 4) on his knee and they were both shooting zombies in the head with guns – with plenty of gore and sound effects.

 I couldn’t help photographing the outside of it, because I could hardly believe it!  Just another contemporary day at the seaside.  How did we get here?  I suppose it's an effort to make the break from the group. 

I read this book called 'My Name is Asher Lev'
He made that journey to express himself in art and he had to make the sacrifice of being rejected from his community, but a lot of people benefitted from it.
That’s what you experience in the second poem.. The Freedom after the pain of departure.

Let’s hear I must leave you - 

 This summer I heard a talk about Disturbed Discipleship.. It’s like Mary’s Fiat. Her Yes to God's proposal.  You have to be disturbed.  Only when you surrender everything... Only then are you running beneath the sky.

You've lost so much but you're cleaving in order to cleave to something better.  What’s the name of that word, that means both itself and its opposite? 

Auto-antonym (I had to look that up!)

Well 'cleave' is one of those!
So there’s this nostaligia, the yearning for the true homeland.  And geography awakens that. And you have to go out to find it, in order to return to a true home inside yourself.  Like also in your other poem about the sky – La Villette. (Poem 11) Looking up at Pegasus, you become part of his realm and suddenly you get a taste of the real.
I guess it’s sacramental.

It sounds very Tolkien too… and CS Lewis.  Let’s see that book you have there! Tolkien's sacramental vision, discerning the Holy in Middle Earth.  I'd love to read that.

So have a magnificent pilgrimage to Oxford and also to Wales and then hopefully back to London,  because I’m longing to hear this segment of the Frankenstien play you put on in New Brunswick - when you were at University.

Yes, I took the script from the  Nick Dear adaptation..

And your production too became a legend!  Everyone was talking about it back in Bruno Saskatchewan, when I was there this May teaching Bard School. 

Thank you.  It was a monster!  I'd love to do a monologue based on it, when I'm back from Wales.

There and back again.  Thanks Tyrrell and congratulations for making the leap. You're booked.  We'll let people know when that monologue gets an airing. 

‘I walk towards the mountain

Till I hear another cry

The waterfall calls distantly

And I run beneath the sky.'

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If you've enjoyed these this,  you might enjoy these too -

1) The Audio book, out now on Audible for only £5.59 or free if you join Audible.  The only reason it's so cheap is that they price according to length, which isn't too sensible for poetry. However it is the length of 3 albums - at 2 hours and 35 mins.  But it does mean that the book and audio together are very affordable, which was the point of making the audio, so that you could listen and then read if you wanted to remember or study one poem in particular.  You can also listen as you read;

2)  My Poetry and Prosecco night at the St Michael's Arts Festival in Stockwell - Invite friends and let's have a poetry party with plenty of discussions afterwards.  You can book here - Books will also be available to buy on the night. Places limited.
The Artistic Director of the Festival writes on the Eventbrite page -

An evening of seemlessly blended sparkle, profundity and joy, with performance poet and inspirational story-teller Sarah de Nordwall, back at the 2018 Festival by popular demand.

Sarah held us spellbound last year with her wisdom and wit, poetry and sheer delight at the universe, and StMaf18 is thrilled she has agreed to come back to charge our glasses for a second time...

Learn more about the Festival and book here!

Poems 13 and 14 of Pirates and Transcendence with Dan Cote Davis

It’s wonderful to have you here, as you wend your way to Oxford from Archatheos, (pronounced Ar KAY theos) from the realm of Deliverance to the grave of the Maker of Middle Earth himself, JRR Tolkien. Apparently you were the first Bard of the realm.  That's got to be good summer camp work!

  So in the midst of this mythopoetic pilgrimage, I’m delighted that you’ve agreed to comment on the next two poems that fall to you… Numbers 13 and 14..

Now, I have to say that this is just a little poem, number 13 and I almost didn’t put it in: 

‘With Tom on the Island of Bol, in the cove below the Monastery’
I just wrote it because I  enjoyed being there in Croatia, but several people have really liked it and I’m wondering what you saw in it.

Well, you say it’s a little poem but it’s sometimes the little things that are the most important!

Let’s hear it first. on soundcloud.

‘There are layers of blue in the grey mist

Sea coloured sky coloured

Wave and deep down pebble coloured

All is one before me.

Pine trees, lightening lime and needle green soft

Tender, spiked at tip

Grace wind-bent trunks

Offering bundled foliage with a

Sheltering care

And underneath

Their shade

We watch the Pirate ship with empty masts

Balance slyly

Along the sharp fine line of the horizon.

One of the things that struck me was the great contrast between praise and those things that take us away from praise.

How exactly?

I see it in the contrast that you continually try and bring between those things that would slyly take us away from the sacramental mind, (the mind that sees things in their true context), such as tenderness or grace found in the sheltering world, but then there's the slyness of the pirate ship, which is in its own shade, trying to take us away from that horizon of meaning that is grounded in the transcendent and the eternal.

Well I love that!

So this contrast between the transcendent scheme of the oneness that leads us to praise and that which would take us away from true ecstasy – movement outside of itself.

And it's grounded in the monastic identity, the monks, offering the little prayer that seems meaningless or insignificant, but which is in fact fruitful. Because it is true praise of the creator and in this sense I was touched by the natural imagery rightly understood ..in the  context of praise.

So it did mean something that the monastery was there and that there was a cove?

Sure because a cove is the place of encounter with the sea.And the sea is a symbol of our praise – the incessant nature of the waves.

And the horizon is entering into God, so there is this kind of encounter with the mystery of the eternal.

So now, what about Our Lady of the Pirates?  That is a real Church on the island of Vis. Have a listen.

This contains the previous one but with more depth and also has a human narrative bound within.  The story of Our Lady of the Pirates.

"I saw the Oleander and the Tamarisk tree beside the shore.
You took me there at night,
Where the shutters of the old stone houses
Creaked with age beneath theyellowing moon.

Our Lady of the Pirates - what a tale you told
Of the old church
At the far point of the bay
As we came to the stone well..."

You see the tension between the Life of God and ours …we have pirates in the previous one but in this one they physically make an assault upon an image of Our Lady, but there is a deeper interpretation at play because this attack upon the Holy has been turned into something tremendous and beautiful, so God is writing a deeper narrative beyond the piracy of human history, right?

Well that's very beautifully expressed.  Indeed, the spring bursts forth when the image is rescued from the sea and placed on the ground.

‘and there the well was built, and now the church’

Pirates steal within the created order, but God is able to reintegrate this theft into a greater and more glorious song. And we have a great joy here in the image of the redemption like a thread that is too bright to see.

The thread too bright for the eye – that is a a line quoted from George Mackay Brown in fact.

And this is one of the key ideas of the divinely planned narrative which is historically manifested in the story of Our Lady of the Pirates, which is in itself an allegory of redemption. Every human life will participate in the theft from God’s creation. Everyone is a thief in some way.

Like Bilbo Baggins?

Everyone is in some way a pirate, but God sends us Our Lady of the Pirates to help bring us all home.  As Tolkien says, the shipwreck is continually happening, we just have to find companions for the shipwreck!

And that is a comforting thought in an adventurous kind of a way.  But in the poem, I'm not so sure that the pirates make it home - 'All that was drawn up from the wrecked boat, was this image.'.  hopefully they do, in the end, perhaps as a result of the 'polyphonic voices of the women dressed black'.

I'm also intrigued by what is gained by trying to make the 'meaning of a poem' explicit and what is lost.. Perhaps it's the resonance in the heart that matters most.  So that anyone from any tradition can be nourished and awoken to the sound of their own soul.  But that's probably a conversation for another post.

So thank you so much Dan and all the best on your pilgrimage to the Eagle and Child with Tyrrell and to the tomb of JRR himself, on the very anniversary of his death. I know that you are committed to the cause of his canonisation and have written a prayer for that intention?  Do put it in  the comments later!  I think some people would be keen to see it.

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If you've enjoyed these this,  you might enjoy these too -

1) The Audio book, out now on Audible for only £5.59 or free if you join Audible.  The only reason it's so cheap is that they price according to length, which isn't too sensible for poetry. However it is the length of 3 albums - at 2 hours and 35 mins.  But it does mean that the book and audio together are very affordable, which was the point of making the audio, so that you could listen and then read if you wanted to remember or study one poem in particular.  You can also listen as you read;

2)  My Poetry and Prosecco night at the St Michael's Festival on 4th October 2018 at 7.30pm for only £12.50 including the Prosecco!  Invite friends and let's have a poetry party with plenty of discussions afterwards.  You can book here - Books will also be available to buy on the night. Places limited.
The Artistic Director of the Festival writes on the Eventbrite page -

An evening of seemlessly blended sparkle, profundity and joy, with performance poet and inspirational story-teller Sarah de Nordwall, back at the 2018 Festival by popular demand.

Sarah held us spellbound last year with her wisdom and wit, poetry and sheer delight at the universe, and StMaf18 is thrilled she has agreed to come back to charge our glasses for a second time...

Learn more about the Festival and book here!

Poem 12 The Edge of Our Unknowing takes us into deep water, with Denise, Arwen and Tom

It always sounded like such a hopeful poem to me – the Edge of Our Unknowing,

“I like it that friendship is like getting into a boat
Pushed out from the shore,
There’ll always be more you want to know
To see, to feel, to sail
But there’s only the journey, never arriving
But the sea is wide and free."

But then I was reading an article in’ Shalom Tidings’ magazine about poetry. In it Leighanna Schesser says “The best poetry, as Robert Frost so famously said, is the kind where the poet learns something by writing the poem – there must be surprise.”

This indeed was the case with this poem. Part of me was issuing a warning about something that I'd failed to see.

Have a listen and then see if you agree with my friend Tom Bentall’s interpretation below, He'd come round to help me sort some of the 81 boxes of books for the Bard Library! And I was reminded of the time when he'd spotted this word, hidden in plain sight -

"I like it that friendship is like getting into a boat
And you wish it was made of glass.
Because then you would see the fish at night
In their own sweet world.
The secret thoughts of that other mind
In a universe oblivious to your own being
And yet so vast and real.”

A universe oblivious to your own being -  that doesn’t sound too intimate does it?  

(Me)  Oh no!  I wonder why I never saw it before.. 

 "But sometimes the fish look up
 And the wood is glass-like.
A sudden seeing from a light beyond
A glimpse in the line of sight
And the sight is a distant shore,
But it comes with a promise."

Apart from making me realise that those fish were actually pretty sinister, I couldn't help noticing that it had all come true as he said.  But then there was this promise.

And it set me thinking again, about what that promise might be. An end to the oblivion?  A beginning of reconciliation? A sign of the kindred nature of all creatures  - no matter how distant they might be to each other? Or even that impossible sounding hope of Julian of Norwich’s assertion, that all things shall be well and all manner of things shall be well?

Because even in the poem, there is something greater than the friendship in the boat.

"Such delight that the unknown way is prepared before us
And this ever-expanding freedom is uniquely ours.
I like it that friendship is like getting into a boat
In a world of wonder"

When I read this same poem to Denise Calverly, seen here in our kitchen with her daughter Arwen, the other day,  she thought the poem made her think how faith is like the edge of our unknowing. And how at some point, we need to get out of the boat.

 She said
‘I can’t help thinking that Peter in the Gospel, steps out of the boat and when he keeps his eyes off the waves  he actually walks on the water. People remember that he sank. I remember that he walked. "

I love where the conversations about poetry go - as much as the the process of writing the poems themselves.  To return to Leighanna in Shalom Tidings Magazine, she speaks about the poet conversing with themselves, their ideas and an imagined audience in a way that is rather Trinitarian.  What I enjoy aswell,  is when the audience is no longer imagined, but real, and adds their own surprising and insightful contribution to the journey.

So why not come, if you can, to the Celebration of National Poetry Day on Thursday 4th October?

The theme is Change... As part of St Michael's Arts festival, I'm performing poems and stories from the book and beyond and there's also Prosecco included!  You can book tickets here and also see what other delights have been prepared for you.


 St Michael's Arts Festival in Stockwell on National Poetry Day  7.30pm - 4th October 2018 

(The festival runs from 4th to 14th October but my performance is just on Thursday 4th )

Or if you are just wanting to lie back right now and listen.. whether you are at the edge of your unknowing or in the thick of it, you can enjoy the audio book of 50 poems for £5.59 right now. 

Looking forward to seeing you at St Michaels or in the comments below!

I like it that friendship is like getting into a boat
In a world of wonder.

And thanks so much again to Tom Bentall for not only helping me shift books, but also for reviewing the audio book in his beautiful tender style.

Apparently if you get 50 reviews, Amazon starts to promote you.  So if you do feel like putting up a review, that would be a wonderful way of pushing the boat out, together!!!



5.0 out of 5 starsBuy it! Read it! Listen to it!! Treasure lies within!!!

15 August 2018

Format: Audio DownloadVerified Purchase

A Beginner’s guide to opening the world with words.

Sarah's beautiful and transportive audiobook sings in the heart long after listening to it.

I find it simultaneously challenges one to think and puts the heart back together in a magical and loving way. Her poetry is at once expressive and delicately tender, proving a valued ally for one’s journey along whatever path of life one chooses. 

I think her wit, charm and erudite use of metaphor adds colour equally to an innocent tone-poem or a more philosophical dialectical study. I find Sarah’s character in her work speaks volumes about her approach to life :- add humour and loving presence; hey presto: joy!!!

Her book is a joy to listen to and one I will certainly take along with me in the coming autumnal season.

Her spiritual insight is precious and timeless, as seen in the hermit story or ‘a black sheep’. Her newer work is often more pensive and poignant but her wisdom-being always shines through.