Building Jerusalem
by Kevin J Gardener
Bloomsbury, £16.99
A Betjeman-esque melancholy pervades these pages: not surprising, perhaps, since the editor is a renowned Betjeman expert. In his introduction to the book, subtitled “Elegies on Parish Churches”, Kevin Gardner writes of a “loss of cultural identity” and of how we seek the “coherence of the past” in an “alienated present”.
English parish churches, tucked down country lanes, can serve this purpose very nicely, especially if they are a little ramshackle and neglected. Such buildings certainly pull in the poets, not least when something elegiac is required. Take Neil Powell visiting St Botolph’s on the Suffolk coast, where “decay has overtaken the postcard charm” and “creepers in the tower challenge the bell ropes”, while “a builder’s sign recalls diminishing hopes”. Lovely, poignant stuff.
The poems assembled here rarely tackle faith or worship. They look behind what Peter Armstrong describes, rather beautifully, as “the faultless basalt face of a theology” and focus on the small adventures, the days out, and the thoughts provoked.
These are poems of wondering and wandering. Sense of place is crucial, too, from Elizabeth Jennings musing on Somerset’s “gentle open slopes, such lack of drama” to Charles Causley depicting the strange Cornish landscape with its “bald-faced rooks that lurk and strut / High shelves of ash and sycamore.”
The literary glitterati are well represented in the selection. The aforementioned Mr Betjeman gets four entries, surpassed only by Peter Scupham (five) and Anthony Thwaite (six), which seems reasonable since they are two of “the most prolific of church elegists in recent years”.
Less familiar names also appear and Gardner is to be commended for the breadth of his editorial sweep. He also insisted that all the poems focused on actual church buildings (there’s even a handy gazetteer at the end of the book), so we are spared those vague, ponderous verses in which churches are little more than clumsy metaphors for, well, pick your poison. The result is a treat from cover to cover.
