An unmissable anthology of touching, humorous, quirky, disconcerting, affirming, erotic and intriguing poems, sensitively interpreted by Janet Morley - renowned poet, critic, theologian and teacher

‘Love set you going’. The opening words of Sylvia Plath’s poem for her newborn daughter are true of each one of us. Love is fundamental to our being, our growth, our development and our happiness. Love enables us to make meaning of our lives in the world, and it gives us hope for what lies beyond. It is completely humdrum and ordinary – yet mysterious beyond words. Beginning in the body, it points us to eternity. Life offers, and asks of us, many different kinds of love, and poets have reflected on this truth with insight and acute observation. As Janet Morley explores love ‘up and down the generations’, ‘grown up love’ and love between ‘God and the human heart’, she reveals what our hearts eventually discern – love has its seasons and ambiguities, its certainties and passions. Love is never simple at all. W. H. Auden * Rupert Brooke * Charles Causley * John Clare * Gillian Clarke * Samuel Taylor Coleridge * Christine De Luca * Imtiaz Dharker * Emily Dickinson * John Donne * Carol Ann Duffy * Ruth Fainlight * U. A. Fanthorpe * Seamus Heaney * George Herbert * Gerard Manley Hopkins * Ted Hughes * John of the Cross * Jane Kenyon * D. H. Lawrence * Edwin Morgan * Sinéad Morrissey * Sylvia Plath * Christina Rossetti * Siegfried Sassoon * E. J. Scovell * William Shakespeare * R. S. Thomas * Rosemary Tonks * Andrew Waterhouse * Charles Wesley * Rowan Williams * Thomas Wyatt

"[Morley’s] comments are gentle, meditative, and perceptive. She avoids the overly devotional and sentimental, and has a gift for picking out the killer line or the telling stanza." - Church Times

"[On OUR LAST AWAKENING] Morley writes with clarity and without simplification. Her theology is humane, experiential, and fed by the same poetry of scripture which Donne held so close. Morley’s God is not some object of our knowledge but the deepest cause for our wonder, through death as much as through life. She doesn’t unweave the poems by over-commenting on them, but allows enough unsaid for them to continue their work. I think Donne would be more than happy to have this book named after one of his own reflections on "our last awakening"." - Church Times

"As always [Morley] is both alert to the literary nature of the poems she discusses and also profound, drawing the reader into meditating on what is being said without seeking to be at all "preachy" or to push a particular religious message." - Julian Meetings Magazine

"[On THE HEART'S TIME] Varied, beautiful, provocative and nurturing." - The Times

"Morley takes a poem, interprets it and applies it, marking a pilgrimage of the heart . . . each interpretation making me feel as if I was gently taken apart and remade anew." - Church Times

"There’s a freedom and rashness in these poems sometimes lacking in religious writing. A wonderful idea, and nicely done." - The Tablet

"[On ALL DESIRES KNOWN] A beautiful book, made newly useful." - thegoodbookstall