A Joint Effort

I always enjoy taking part in a group project, everyone working towards a common aim but bringing to the venture their individual interests and skills, their different perspectives. Earlier this year the members of Picaresque, my poetry group, visited Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery; we each selected two items on display as inspiration to write poems. Yesterday morning we met to share the results of the exercise - and what an interesting morning it proved to be.

Several people had chosen paintings or photographs from a visiting exhibition, others had chosen objects - in my case, medieval floor tiles from Hailes Abbey, a Cisterian foundation a few miles outside the town, now in the care of English Heritage. All of the poems were extremely powerful and I found it a revelation to see works of art growing out of other works of art; all in all a fascinating exercise.

 

Ora pro nobis

The coldest hour of the night;

guttering candlelight sidles

Selection of decorated floor tiles

in beneath the yawning arches

as sightless saints gaze down

upon our cowled file,

sentinels to the litany of intercession

prayed with our sandalled feet.

Richard, Earl of Cornwall

Beatrice of Falkenberg

Sanchia of Provence.

Immortalised in fired clay

in footworn shields and coats of arms,

compass to our shuffling steps

(our eyes cast down, obedient to the Rule),

they guide from cell to sanctuary and shrine

to sing the office in their name.

de Warenne

de Peveril

de Ferrers

Polished by pilgrim's knees

in urgent supplication,

smoothed by prostrate penitents

craving absolution -

these symbols with which

the rich bought back their souls

perpetuate their claim

upon our cloistered lives.

Miserere mei, Deus,

secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.*

*“Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness” - the opening verse from the night office of Matins.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2014)