Building Jerusalem: Elegies on Parish Churches

A new collection of poems by well-known poets echoing the love of the parish church in the British literary memory. Nostalgia and love of parish churches is deeply embedded in the British psyche. Following the success of Poems in the Porch, a collection of hitherto unpublished poems on parish churches by Sir John Betjeman, Kevin Gardner has now assembled a new anthology of poems on the same theme yet with a greater diversity of post-war authors – Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas, John Betjeman, C. Day Lewis, U. A. Fanthorpe and many others. The collection is introduced by a fascinating critical introduction, 'Anglican Memory and Post-war British Poetry' and will appeal to church and poetry lovers alike in their droves.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Anglican Memory and Post-War British Poetry POEMS Fleur Adcock At Great Hampden Kilpeck Simon Armitage Harmonium Peter Armstrong Rains Cliff Ashby Fountains Abbey Juliet Aykroyd The Angels of Muchelney George Barker At Thurgarton Church John Betjeman A Lincolnshire Church St Saviour's Aberdeen Park Highbury, London, N. Sunday Morning, King's Cambridge Uffington Charles Causley At St Hilary St Protus & St Hyacinth, Blisland Glen Cavaliero Fenland Churches A Redundant Church Gillian Clarke Top Church Jack Clemo In Roche Church Anne Cluysenaar About the Church Tony Connor St Mark's, Cheetham Hill Iain Crichton Smith In Luss Churchyard Kevin Crossley Holland Angels at St Mary's In Latter Days Simon Curtis Leaving Towcester Vicarage Donald Davie The Priory of St Saviour, Glendalough C. Day-Lewis Seen from the Train U.A. Fanthorpe Greensted Church St James's, Charfield 'Soothing and Awful' Roy Fuller Youth Revisited Roger Garfitt Rites of Passage John Greening A Huntingdonshire Elegy A Huntingdonshire Nocturne Geoffrey Grigson West Window John Heath-Stubbs Churchyard of Saint Mary Magdalene, Old Milton Michael Henry St Martin in the Field Slipper Chapel Geoffrey Hill Epiphany at Saint Mary and All Saints Loss and Gain Brian Hinton All Saints Jeremy Hooker St Cross Frances Horovitz Country Afternoon Ted Hughes Heptonstall Old Church Elizabeth Jennings Somerset P.J. Kavanagh Westwell Churchyard, Oxfordshire Philip Larkin Church Going A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb Peter Levi Shobdon Herbert Lomas Christ Church St Martin-in-the-Fields Roland Mathias Brechfa Chapel Hubert Moore Crossing the Church Andrew Motion For Now Norman Nicholson Of this Parish John Ormond Cathedral Builders Peter Porter An Angel in Blythburgh Church At Whitechurch Canonicorum The Rider Haggard Window, St Mary's, Ditchingham Neil Powell At Little Gidding Iken Leiston Abbey Providence Rodney Pybus Suffolk Church Vicki Raymond Boveney Church Peter Reading St James's Anne Ridler Edlesborough Vernon Scannell In a City Churchyard David Scott Locking the Church Peter Scupham Dissolution Minsden Rule Service Stone Head Jon Silkin The Cathedral Chair C.H. Sisson In Kent Knole Muchelney Abbey Jon Stallworthy At the Church of St John Baptist, Preston Bissett, May 1974 Anne Stevenson Pennine Seán Street Churchyard Knowlton, Cranborne Chase Kim Taplin Fairford Windows R.S. Thomas The Belfry Country Church Anthony Thwaite Dunkeswell Abbey At Dunwich Eccles Manhood End The Mole at Kilpeck Church Reformation Andrew Waterman Ludham, St Catherine's Church, The Rood Screen Rowan Williams Please Close this Door Quietly Clive Wilmer East Anglian Churchyard Near Walsingham The Ruined Abbey Andrew Young The Ruined Chapel

About the Author :
Dr Kevin J. Gardner is Professor of English at Baylor University, Texas. He has published numerous scholarly essays on British poetry. His books include Poems in the Porch (Continuum) Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman (Continuum) and Betjeman and the Anglican Imagination (SPCK).

Review :
A church without a poem is a steeple without a bell, a choir without a hymn. Thank you Kevin Gardner for composing such a glorious sound, and from friends old and new. It will enhance every church visitor's bliss. A plangent, devastating elegy for a Church of England apparently in its death throes … One reads it with mingled admiration of the verse and sadness at the dereliction of so many English parish churches. An anthology that gave me even more pleasure than I expected. A treat from cover to cover