A Snowfall of Words

Church Window Mask

Wednesday 17 April 6.30pm

Explore the significance of poetry in today’s world through a discussion of specific poems, featuring speakers Mark Oakley & Diane Pacitti.

  • Diane Pacitti’s recent poems seek to deepen our vision of reality through a precise response to the natural world. Collaborating with a scientist and an artist, she writes for Earth Justice projects at St James’s Piccadilly. After gaining the Bronte Poetry Prize, she produced the collection Dark Angelic Mills during a Poetry Residency in Bradford. Guantanamo, a publication produced with her artist husband Antonio Pacitti, was praised by Harold Pinter.

  • The Very Rev’d Dr Mark Oakley is Dean of Southwark. Formerly Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, he is a respected speaker and author of books on the relationship between spirituality and poetry, including The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry which was awarded the international Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing. @CanonOakley

  • What is the point of poetry in such a precarious world, at a time when so much we value is being threatened?

    Is poetry something difficult that most people leave others to enjoy?

    Or it something more vital and urgent, a ’soul language’ for a time when religious language often doesn’t resonate?

    Our speakers will approach these questions through the experience of particular poems.

    Mark Oakley’s books include The Splash of Words described by the former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy as ‘this beautiful and wise meditation centred around the soul language of poetry’.

    Diane Pacitti’s work includes the collection Dark Angelic Mills and poems written for Earth Justice projects at St James’s Piccadilly.