Dear Friends,
Happy Saturday! It’s been a busy week. I’ve been down in London for work, and for a reader’s meet up for Plough. Now that we’ve been back a week or two, I feel more in the swing of things and am getting into a rhythm of both working on some of my more academic writing, and also readying things for the launch of You are a Tree. In general, the weather has been becoming more mild, with the rather large exception of a wild storm at the beginning of this week that disrupted all the trains and bridges. Nonetheless, when it had blown over it created rather beautiful lighting, which we took advantage of by filming a little trailer for the book. We recorded it on the Lade Braes, a path through the woods in St Andrews that has been around for at least 900 years (you can read more about it here).
It was a marvellous mixture of the first and last metaphors in my book:
People are Trees and Life is a Journey.
The picture above (and below) are stills from the filming. You can tell it was cold! My publisher will upload the video on Youtube and I will upload it on Instagram and Facebook as soon as it is finished, so keep an eye out and share if you like.
I write to you slightly later than usual because something quite exciting has been uploading all morning: an interview with the poet and priest Malcolm Guite about Metaphor and the Imagination! My podcast has been largely on pause since I started my job at King’s College London last year, but as we round the corner to the book launch, the itch to restart it overcame me. I’m reacording a series of conversations with interesting people about their favourite metaphors— some in the book, some not. I’m excited to share these conversations.
As a thank you to everyone who has preordered the book, I am uploading the unedited video recording of this conversation, which I’ll later edit down and release as a podcast. You can find the exclusive video at the end of this post And .As a reminder, until the release of You are a Tree on February 20th, I will continue to give a month of free subscription to anyone who pre-orders the book. You can claim that by pre-ordering the book and sending me screenshot of your receipt via email: thejoynessthebrave[at]gmail.com.
We discussed (and Malcolm read aloud) Seamus Heaney’s wonderful little poem St Kevin and the Blackbird. Heaney retells the story of an ancient Celtic Saint who, while he was praying with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross (as the Celtic saints were in the habit of doing) had a blackbird nest in his arms.
St Kevin, in a way, becomes a tree.
St Kevin and the Blackbird
Seamus Heaney
And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.
*
And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.
Here’s my conversation with Malcolm:
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