So how do I write poetry? Well, I would like to say that I have a scheduled poetry slot in my diary and I sit in the corner of a rustic café, quill in hand and write while I sip on a fancy coffee. Alas it is not so.
A poem drifts into my mind like a wondering Celtic Saint in a precarious Coracle and then moors itself near my heart and after a while taps on it, rather annoyingly until I appease the unwelcome interruption and open up and let it in by making space on a page or two.
Sometimes poems turn up uninvited at the most inconvenient of times, like when I'm driving or in a serious meeting where I'm meant to be sensible and important. Poem's have a habit of gate-crashing charades.
They are also a bit like puppets. They can say things that you just simply couldn't get away with normally by using conventional sentences. Through poems I can mention things that I dare not challenge with regular words, like church politics, finances and sacred cows like Sunday morning services. Sometimes poems kick out at a lack of love for people whom the church is called to serve, but manage to do it with a boot that enthuses rather than bruises.
I am aware that some of my poems may seem rather contradictory. They brandish a bowl of healing balm on one hand, but a stick in the other, a goad to provoke to do the things that we really ought to do and to think of the world that is to come. The one that will be made perfectly new.
I hope and pray that you will find something good and challenging in these poems and that you may choose to be proactive through reading my poems and that they will remind you that heaven is something we are called to advance on earth. I hope and pray that if you haven't done so already you may get your hands dirty loving those around you who need hope.
So, I humbly offer you this hodgepodge of a collection in the hope that as you read them out loud or to yourself that somehow you may encounter the presence of the One who loves us and gave his life for us and sends us out to let the world in on what we've got.