Janet Morley – författare

Packed with riches yet highly accessible, The Heart's Time is at its core a series of short, resonant poems for each weekday of Lent and Easter.It will appeal to existing poetry lovers as well as those who want to start exploring how poems can be a resource for our spiritual lives, whether or not they are written with a consciously Christian intent.Poets often address subjects our culture seeks to avoid, and poetry demands that we 'slow down to the heart's time' in order to discover deeper levels of meaning than at first appear.Janet Morley offers her own skilful and reflective commentaries on a fascinating themed sequence of both familiar and unexpected poems, including works by Margaret Atwood, St Augustine, Charles Causley, E. E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Carol Ann Duffy, Ruth Fainlight, U. A. Fanthorpe, Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, George Herbert, Elizabeth Jennings, Denise Levertov, Roger McGough, Adrienne Rich, Christina Rossetti, R. S. Thomas and Rowan Williams.

Advent is celebrated when the year is becoming darker and colder, moving into the death and dormancy of winter.Before we can greet the coming of the light, we need to engage with some themes that are challenging and occasionally fearful. Like the Magi who travelled a long distance to search out and adore the infant Jesus, and who took some wrong turns on the way, we too have a journey to undertake before we find that we have'Walked haphazard by starlight straightInto the kingdom of heaven.'U. A. Fanthorpe, BC:ADHaphazard by Starlight is a companion volume to Janet Morley's bestselling Lent book, The Heart's Time, which delighted readers with its thoughtfully chosen selection of poems and its biblically sensitive commentaries.Here, the reader is given an opportunity to engage in a pilgrimage of the heart, through Advent and Christmas to the feast of the Epiphany. Each day - from 1 December to 6 January - offers a poem (sometimes explicitly Christian, often not) and an accessible commentary that is both critically informed and devotional in intent.The poets represented include Rowan Williams, Elizabeth Jennings, Edwin Muir, Philip Larkin, Jane Kenyon, Gillian Clarke, George Herbert, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Waldo Williams, P. J. Kavanagh, Ruth Fainlight, William Blake and many more.

'Bring us, Lord our God,at our last awakening,into the house and gate of heaven...'John Donne's prayer speaks of the hope and promise of a life with God that embraces us beyond death as well as during our time on earth. However, people of faith are not exempt from fears, fantasies and speculation, nor from the normal sequence of grief reactions that afflict bereaved human beings.Poetry, whether or not it is consciously religious, can help.In this selection of poems and thoughtful commentaries, Janet Morley offers an enriching approach to a subject we might prefer to avoid contemplating - our ordinary mortality.Here you will find the work of Dylan Thomas, Gillian Clarke, Philip Larkin, U. A. Fanthorpe, Seamus Heaney, Ann Griffiths, Jane Kenyon, Anne Stevenson, A. K. Ramanujan, Richard Baxter, George Herbert, Roger McGough and many more.Ranging in tone from joyful and ecstatic to gentle, ironic, despairing and even hilarious, these writers help us to look at death, accompany the dying, celebrate those who have died, and articulate our hope about what lies beyond. As a result, we have an opportunity to experience the whole range of human emotions about what it means to live, to love and to be loved.

'Love set you going'.The opening words of Sylvia Plath's poem for her newborn daughter are true of each one of us. Love is fundamental to our being, our growth, our development and our happiness. Love enables us to make meaning of our lives in the world, and it gives us hope for what lies beyond. It is completely humdrum and ordinary - yet mysterious beyond words. Beginning in the body, it points us to eternity.Life offers, and asks of us, many different kinds of love, and poets have reflected on this truth with insight and acute observation. As Janet Morley explores love 'up and down the generations', 'grown up love' and love between 'God and the human heart', she reveals what our hearts eventually discern - love has its seasons and ambiguities, its certainties and passions. Love is never simple at all.W. H. Auden * Rupert Brooke * Charles Causley * John Clare * Gillian Clarke * Samuel Taylor Coleridge * Christine De Luca * Imtiaz Dharker * Emily Dickinson * John Donne * Carol Ann Duffy * Ruth Fainlight * U. A. Fanthorpe * Seamus Heaney * George Herbert * Gerard Manley Hopkins * Ted Hughes * John of the Cross * Jane Kenyon * D. H. Lawrence * Edwin Morgan * Sinead Morrissey * Sylvia Plath * Christina Rossetti * Siegfried Sassoon * E. J. Scovell * William Shakespeare * R. S. Thomas * Rosemary Tonks * Andrew Waterhouse * Charles Wesley * Rowan Williams * Thomas Wyatt