The sound of silence
SIX years ago, at the invitation of Dame Carol Ann Duffy, I had the great privilege of being a judge of the Ted Hughes Prize for new work in poetry. After reading mountains of volumes, we gave the prize to Raymond Antrobus for his collection The Perseverance. Born in Hackney to an English mother and a Jamaican father, Antrobus was thought to be dyslexic with severe learning disabilities until, at the age of six, he was found to be deaf.
Since receiving the prize, he has become a leading voice in contemporary poetry; so it was with enormous pride that I went, last week, to the launch of his memoir, The Quiet Ear: An investigation of missing sound, at which he was interviewed by the fantastic Rose Ayling-Ellis. He also read from the book, accompanied by the deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie. The conversation ranged from the shame of miscommunication, the importance of teachers, and the joy of finding a deaf community in an ableist culture to the liberation of first daring to take off the hat that is hiding your hearing aids, and the decline of deaf education in Britain.
It was an evening of pure joy — and a call to action. I sat in the audience, surrounded by sign language and waving our applause, and remembered part of a poem by Raymond that has never been more apposite: “Can we disagree graciously I am tired of people Not knowing the volume Of their power.”
Free to view
I AGREE with Stephen King that books are a uniquely portable magic; so I was sad to hear that, according to the National Literary Trust’s recent research, only one in three eight- to 18-year-olds says that they enjoy reading in their free time. The Government has consequently designated 2026 as a National Year of Reading. Denmark has just announced that it will be scrapping its VAT of 25 per cent on books, to help to address the “reading crisis” there.
Equally worrying, though, was something that I discovered on my recent holiday in Florida, where parents have the right to insist that school libraries remove books that they do not believe to be wholesome. Hundreds of books are now banned, including titles by Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and various dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Some Shakespeare plays are prohibited, because they mention sexuality or refer to cross-dressing.
Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance, as the saying goes. I was proud to buy a sticker in a Key West bookstore proclaiming “I read banned books”.
Conservation area
FLORIDA was beautiful, and the people were welcoming. Not once was I tempted to wear my red cap that says “Make America Great Britain Again”. The wildlife mesmerised me: alligators, dolphins, turtles — and, as I sat having a waterside lunch with the cheery local bishop, a graceful manatee popped up to say hello.
It was hot, though. August in Florida is God’s way of reminding you who’s in charge, although it doesn’t stop the locals enjoying a laugh. I was admiring the neat front lawn of a house in Islamorada and complimented the owner as he watered it. “Thanks,” he said. “I try to keep it chicken-proof: impeckable.”
Mass extinction
ON MY return to the UK, I discovered from English Heritage that British puddings are “on the verge of extinction”. Fruit crumble, treacle sponge, and the puzzlingly named Spotted Dick, are all, apparently, on the way out. Two-thirds of households make puddings only once a month, or less. If this pattern is driven by calorie-deficient dieting, there were no signs that the United States is on trend. I ate one indulgent dessert on my break away, and later collapsed on the beach, grasping my extended stomach and worrying that Greenpeace might see me and throw buckets of cold water over me.
So, it was good to get back to the cathedral and, on Lammas Day, to bless the kitchens and bakers of our local bakery — and, a week later, to bless the tea stall’s Second Flush Darjeeling and give thanks for those employed in tea-harvesting.
Tea and toast were all I wanted after American cuisine. The talking scales were telling me that they don’t weigh coach parties. Ah, well, as Marilyn Wann said, “Life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks.”
Speaking in tongues
IT WAS lovely to travel to Edinburgh, one of my favourite British cities, to preach at the impressive Old St Paul’s. The occasion was billed as “The Feast of the Falling Asleep of the Virgin Mary”, which brought to mind an image of her nodding off in a favourite armchair — which, it struck me on further thought, would be a nice way to be assumed into heaven.
The lady I met on arrival, travelling up the long staircase to the church in a stairlift, was, I thought, maybe taking the Assumption a little too literally, but proved to be the most fun and gracious of hosts for lunch afterwards.
Edinburgh is a great place for poetry. There is an excellent Scottish Poetry Library, and 26 poetry quotations are etched into the Scottish Parliament’s Canongate Wall, including some words from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Inversnaid”:
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Try to type out a Hopkins poem on your laptop, or one by Emily Dickinson, and your auto-correct will explode with frustration. By subverting our expectations of language, these poets reward us with insights that we never dreamed of. We need this wildness more than ever. As the Scottish Gaelic has it, Chan eil aon chànan gu leòr: one language is never enough.
Sins of the fathers
SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL currently has an installation of 13,000 white paper doves suspended from the ceiling, each with a prayer for peace written by visitors, schoolchildren, local workers, and members of the congregation (News, 8 August). It has a beauty and a poignancy: people spend time beneath it to distil, and come to terms with, the need for the peace with justice which our world is crying out for.
We are, of course, painfully aware of how children are affected by warfare, the footage from Gaza being unbearable to watch. What is less known is the number of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. Kyiv says that at least 20,000 have been taken from the eastern territories since 2014, but the real figure is likely to be more.
Taken from schools, orphanages, and checkpoints, the children have been subjected to illegal adoption and indoctrination. It recently emerged that officials in Russian-occupied Luhansk created an online catalogue of abducted children, offering them to anyone who wanted them. At the age of 18, many are conscripted to fight against their own people.
John F. Kennedy used to say that children are the living messages that we send to a time we will not see. I worry about the messages that so many children carry within them because of the failure of our generation to prevent their being the victims of greed-driven, weaponised games. Jesus taught us that we should all become like children. We first need to work for a world in which that sounds like a safe and magical option.
The Very Revd Dr Mark Oakley is Dean of Southwark and Canon Theologian of Wakefield cathedral.
