Alan Horner was a good friend. Sadly the cancer, with which he contended for a number of years, overcame him in September 06.

Alan, as we Methodists say, was one of Mr Wesley’s preachers and an exceptional one at that!  He never struck me as a particularly religious man but without doubt he was a godly man who served the church and the world in whatever way he could.

Poetry was one of his great loves and the year before he died he published a book of his work – A Picture with the Paint Still Wet.  

Exploring our own Amazement
Alan Horner

Poetry is the language in which we explore our own amazement, according to the poet and dramatist Christopher Fry. Of course, we explore other feelings too, but a sense of wonder is part of spirituality. D H Lawrence even suggested that ‘when the wonder has gone out of us, we are dead.’ Poetry expresses wonder, but it also creates wonder. Reading it can generate a sense of discovery, even of revelation.
As with other art forms, a poem may not yield its wealth immediately. It may be necessary to return to it again and again. And even when it becomes familiar and valued, it goes on opening itself up, revealing new layers of meaning and significance, saying to us far more than its author knew when it was written. Indeed, a number of poets speak of a poem having a life of its own, surprising its creator by the way it develops. There is a feeling too that a poem is never finished, only that the poet has come to a stop.

The sense of open-endedness is exciting. It applies not only to poetry but to other forms of reflection, including the reading of the Bible. There is of course much poetry in the Bible, not only in books like the Psalms and Job and Revelation, but elsewhere. And the language of imagery is the only language we have in which we can talk of God or the world of the Spirit. The tendency of some to read the Bible poetry as science and history is a disservice to us all. And while there is something to be said for reading some books as a whole, there is place too for the leisurely pondering and savouring which a poem also frequently requires.

The writing of a poem is often a form of meditation, the poet carried along by a stream of thoughts, images, ideas. Words and pictures suggest themselves. There is no time just then to pause to change a word or check a rhythm. The poem is writing itself and must be got down there and then, which is why poems are often first written on serviettes or backs of envelopes! Who knows when they will come? And their subjects are as diverse as life. They are the response of mind, emotion, and imagination to life as it is observed and experienced. More of us are capable of creating poetry than we realise. Rhyming is not necessary. We already regularly use images to describe people, places, happenings, and feelings. Words form patterns, fall into rhythms, and communicate both facts and perceptions to others.

Interesting though it is to read about poetry, even what poets themselves say about it, there is no substitute for the encounter with the poem itself. Described in the Forward Book of Poetry 2001 as ‘epiphanies with sound effects’, the encounter with a poem is unique to the reader or hearer. Its invitation is to explore and allow yourself to be surprised.

(This article appeared in Living Spirituality News, Spring 2004.)