Auden famously claimed that poetry makes nothing happen, while Heaney argued that ‘the efficacy of poetry is nil – no lyric has ever stopped a tank’. Rachel Mann’s talk meets these claims head on and suggests that poetry has a distinctive power to transform us and the world. In short, that as Wittgenstein claims, poetry can pierce us. As Emily Dickinson writes, poetry can simultaneously make our bodies so cold no fire can warm us while leaving us believing that the tops of our heads are blown off.
Rachel Mann is a priest, poet, theologian, and broadcaster based in South Manchester. She is Archdeacon of Salford and Bolton, Visiting Teaching Fellow at Manchester Writing School, Manchester Met University, and Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, Salisbury. Author of twelve books, her writing has been called ‘exceptional’ (Rowan Williams), ‘astonishing’ (Michael Symmons Roberts), and ‘perceptive, lucid and stimulating’ (The Times Literary Supplement). She regularly broadcasts on BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4. See www.rachelmann.co.uk for further info.
Engaging Theology in Cumbria 