| View this email online if it doesn't display correctly |
| | e-Pistle News from the University Church |
| | View this email online if it doesn't display correctly |
| | Choral Evensong - surely the Church of England’s finest service - this Saturday at 5pm sung by the Locke Singers. Why not come along?
Thanks to everyone who made the Easter services such a triumph: the flower arrangers, Saturday cleaners, poetry readers, musicians, servers, caterers, stewards, and our clergy team. Just out of statistical interest, Maundy Thursday numbers were down by 25%, Stations of the Cross down by 30% (terrible weather), poetry up, choir music up by 50%, Liturgy about the same as usual, but Easter Morning up by an astonishing 25% with people standing at the back and standing in the gallery. There’s no obvious explanation for this unexpected rise, but it certainly gave us all a boost.
So now we look forward to the Trinity term and the term card is already online on the website.
|
|
|
| |
| Services this Week
Tuesdays & Thursdays
12.15pm Lunchtime Eucharist
Sunday 12th April Easter 2
10.30am Sung Eucharist
Preacher: Canon Brian Mountford |
|
|
|
Forthcoming Events
Oxford poetry seminars Thursday 9th April - Robert Southey Thursday 16th April - Robert Penn Warren
|
|
Forthcoming Concerts Saturday, 18th March, 8pm The Oxford Sinfonia: Berlioz, Ravel & Bizet
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The University Church at Easter pictures (all credit to Anna Zornoza) |
| | | | |  |
Poetry
Competition:
Poems
for Queen Bess
In
1566, Queen Elizabeth I made a memorable trip to Oxford, when she was greeted with
a rich pageant of music, disputations and parades. On 23rd May 2015, the University Church will host a
re-enactment of this day.
Poems
are invited on the theme of “Tudor”.
There are three categories: under 13, 14-17,
and 18+. The winners in each category will receive book tokens.
First
prize in each category:
18+: £50
14-17: £40
Under 13: £30
Winners will be
announced on Friday 8th May. Shortlisted poems will be printed for
display on the walls of St Mary’s, as they were in the time of Elizabeth I, and
poets will be invited to read as part of the celebrations on 23rd
May.
To enter, email smv.heritage@gmail.com by Monday 27th April. Poems must
be original and unpublished. Please
email your poem (max. 40 lines) as an attachment (the poet’s name must not appear
on the poem itself) and include a separate document with your name, title of
poem, age (if under 18), address and email.
|
| | Poetry Corner
His Books
My days among the Dead are past;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old:
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.
With them I take delight in weal
And seek relief in woe;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedew'd
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.
My thoughts are with the Dead; with them
I live in long-past years,
Their virtues love, their faults condemn,
Partake their hopes and fears;
And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with an humble mind.
My hopes are with the Dead; anon
My place with them will be,
And I with them shall travel on
Through all Futurity;
Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.
Robert Southey (12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843)
Robert Southey – friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and later one of the “Lake Poets” – was partly educated at Balliol College. However, he found the atmosphere there stifling, writing to a friend in 1807, “Of all the months in my life (happily they did not amount to years) those which were passed at Oxford were the most insufferable.” He continues: “all that I learnt was a little swimming (very little the worse luck) & a little boating, which is very greatly improved, now that I have a boat of my own upon this delightful lake. I never remember to have dreamt of Oxford, – a sore proof of how little it entered into my moral being; – of school on the contrary I dream perpetually.” At the root of this is an idea that is core to the nature of the Romantic poet – those experiences which form us must be ratified in dreams. Certainly, the poem above shows the way in which books take hold of Southey’s imagination: his “thoughts are with the Dead”, seeking solace in the duplication that the present finds in the past.
(Incidentally, he records in the same letter another Oxford episode which could only have happened in the late eighteenth century: “Do you remember the mad Landor of Trinity who fired a pistol thro his window at one of the fellows, & told him he was a little lump of corruption?” Southey, the man, was of his own time, even if the poet Southey lives outside it.)
|
| Lunchtime poetry seminars A vacation series of lunchtime seminars on poets with a connection to Oxford University. In each session we will read and discuss a selection of poems from the writer. Feel free to bring lunch with you. 1-2pm in the Old Library. Thursday 9th April - Robert Southey
Thursday 16th April - Robert Penn Warren (final session in the series)
|
| | | |
