Fear and loathing in Los England…

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Chris Goan

I am just back from York, where I was attending an Iona Community event. I have started the two year discernment process towards becoming a full member of the community, and this event had two parts- firstly time spent with other new members examining one of the four ‘rules’ that form the basis for membership-

Working for justice and peace, wholeness and reconciliation in our localities, society and the whole creation.

(By the way, if you are interested in the work of the Iona Community, let’s have a chat.)

After this came a day with around 80-90 of the existing full members as we heard from Paul Parker, Recording Clark of the Quakers in Britain. The Quakers don’t have a ‘leader’ – rather Paul’s role is to seek to create good processes for the 450 worshipping groups of friends. He spoke powerfully about quiet diplomacy and the Quaker colective process of testing concern together to develop collective courage. He contrasted the ‘prophet’ role (calling out injustice) from the ‘reconciler’ (seeking to listen and love) role- how they sometimes need to be employed in different ways and in different circumstances. In other words- the two hands of non-violence, in which one is the hand held aloft to say STOP, and the other is open to say ‘I love you, can we talk?’

This discussion inevitably makes me think about the divided and splintered shape of our society just now. How do we engage – as either prophets or reconcilers? Where are the spaces in which either of these things are possible?

And even if we find these places, how will I find the courage?

Meanwhile, there is another fear project going on at full tilt. Fear as a political instrument to create division through hatred and scapegoating of the outsider.

As you might expect, I have been trying to explore some of this through poetry. Here is what I am working on…

Be not afraid

I know you are afraid love -
Who can blame you? This broken world
Wobbles so hard it might
Shake us all off.
And all those purple-faced men 
Looking for someone else to blame -
If they run out of brown people
They might wave their flags at us.

We should beware my love
For there are those for whom your fear spells opportunity. 
They nurture it in toxic tubes, so
To spore the very air they feed us, and
None of us are immune because 
Even those of us with those lumps in our throats
Must still breathe.

So, forgive my riding high on this highest horse 
Because I need to tell you this;
If we always fear of what you do not know
It will rob our future of hope
It will tuck us up in defended spaces
Seeking only safety
Watching the world through narrow arrow slits
Flexing that persistent itch in our trigger fingers
But if we always fear the stranger
How will we ever make new friends?

I know you better my beloved -
Your heart beats beauty on your sleeve.
I know you would mend the broken if you could 
With that clever glue called kindness.
I know you would never eat alone
When someone close was starving.
I know you were never made for hatred 
When  the core of you is love;
When the heart of you is love;
When at the bones of you is love;
When in the mess of you;
Is love.

So love.

New proost poetry podcast with Samara Pitt…

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Chris Goan

One of the delightful things about our Proost project is that it enables us to walk the edges and find others that are doing the same. We try to gather some of this edge walking via our two podcasts- one that has a more general focus (and includes trying to do Proost ‘buisiness’ out in the open), the other one gathering poets and poetry- as this seems to have always been a strong and important strand of what we are about.

Today I was delighted to listen and share this conversation;

Where does poetry go? What is it for? How might it be used in the service of justice, peace and reconciliation? How does this relate to spirituality?

In this episode, our Talitha talks to the poet, musician and activist Samara Pitt about her practice, her songs and her love of words. In particular, she describes a process of turning poetry into song – an almost magical process…

Samara describes herself like this;

Samara is a 7th generation coloniser-inheritor living on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri Woirurrung people in the hills outside of Naarm/Melbourne.

She has lived and worked in several different intentional communities, most recently at Gembrook Retreat where the community invites people on to the land to encounter God in creation and to equip each other to live a soulful life.

She loves singing, singing with others, and putting music to words that help us listen more deeply to Country and to soul. Drawing on the liturgical tradition of sung refrains as a congregational response to the reading of a psalm, she has just started to compose short songs based on the repetition of short phrases, designed to help us dwell with the emotion and beauty of words and harmonies. They are also a grateful tribute and offering to the writers.

You can find more of Samara’s work – and support it – here.

Here is Samara’s account of her poetry choices for this episode.

Butterflies

Shaun Tan is one of my favourite writers and illustrators working in these lands now called Australia. His books are haunting and beautiful. and help me to look at the ordinary through the lens of wonder and imagination. This is taken from his book Tales from the Inner City which explores the mythic presence of the more-than-human world in the midst of our cities.

The hunger

The lyrics come from Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s book ‘Thin Places’, a mix of nature writing and Troubles memoir about growing up in in the midst of violence in Derry and the role of nature in helping her find peace and healing.

The halos and the rocks

Gout Gout is an up and coming Australian sprinter who gave the most poetic statement I’ve ever heard from an athlete in a press conference, when he was asked if he still feels normal. I found another slam poetry style quote from him about how he ‘steps light but presence heavy’, and then added my own line imagining the cycle of preparing for, running and coming down after races.

Turn towards the darkness

I found these lines in a book by Chris Anderson called ‘Light when it comes’. Based on the spiritual practice of ‘examen’, these words suggest that we turn to face darkness rather than flee from it.

Art as agitator/discomforter/confronter…

Posted on September 12, 2025 by Chris Goan

This image is everywhere.

Why? is it because it is ‘good’ art? I am not sure how to judge such a thing. Is it because it is brave and fearless in the face of unyielding bureacracy? Perhaps there is some of this here. Is it because it captures a mood- a national feeling against an unjust law? I hope so. God knows, we need our post-modern Prophets even more than the ancient Israelites did.

There remains something else too that makes me slightly uncomfortable- the celebrity mystique of protest art that is allowable somehow because it has been owned by the establishment – permissable as a democratic safety valve that pretends towards non-conformity whilst at the same time playing the art game as well as everyone. The Banksy machine is very well oiled after all…

He even made a self-aware film in which he describes the rules of the machine…

Michaela tells me that the inverse snobbery in me never allows me to fully enjoy anything that is popular, and this skews me towards art that is made on the edge, the fringes rather than the centre. The irony here is that I love art that challenges our culturual assumptions injustices but in order to do this, it has to break through the algorythms somehow to reach large numbers of people… just as Banksy has managed. For art to engage, it has to find vehicles that will allow it to travel.

Here is a case in point. I was recently asked to supply some poetry for an art exhibition entitled ‘A colourful world’. The idea was to place some poems on coloured cloth and drape them in the entrance. I suggested this poem from 2014 as it seemed to fit the theme rather well. Each three-line verse taking a different colour as inspiration. It was my attempt to consider the beauty and brokenness of this wonderful life that we have, in all its different colours…

Blue hangs like a limp flag above him

Stirred only by half-a-breeze

Always waiting for tomorrow

.

Light falling through these trees

As if through ten green bottles

Hanging on for the fall

.

In a crush of commuting greys she wore bright orange

Less to draw attention to herself, more in blazing protest

Against complicity, against the curse of ordinary compliance

.

Yellow says hello

As the summer strips the grass to straw

And flowers forget their gazing upwards

.

Red bowl of the sun in a darkening sky

Curtaining so fast that I reach out

Grasping as to cup it, to keep it close

.

Pink flesh unfolds like a flower

This fragile child, as if fearing the late frost

Now wrapped up safe in mother

.

The night is purple, not-quite-dark

Wide open like the mouth of a whale

Or the space between stars

.

Black like before-life, like un-pregnancy

Like before the big bang roared outwards into us

Before love made anything possible

.

Grey like the day she came to say “The time has come for leaving”

The sun itself was choked by cloud

The very sea was weeping

.

Water falling down on these old rocks

Gilding them with liquid silver

This normal place, anointed

.

Age has turned your hair pure white

Like the soul that dances in you

You are cathedral and I, your evensong

.

Sunlight makes alchemy from mountains

Now gold in the evening mist

Far beyond the wealth of kings

.

Brown like the ground where we lay down

The earth is pillow-soft

And waiting

After accepting this suggestion , the curator later gave me a print-out of the poem with crosses next to the verses he wanted. Black, pink and brown where all out, as was white. He only wanted ‘positive’ verses, or ones he could understand. He wanted a kind of ‘Hallmark’ poetry that was pretty, ornamental, but unchallenging. When I suggested this was not the way that most of us experienced this colourful world, or wanted to engage with it through art, he told me that I would have to deal with the ‘complaints’. In the end, we did use most of the poem, but it left me thinking again about art gatekeeping.

What does this look like at my end of the market? Where are the organisations that would foster/network/encourage/publish this kind of art?

Of course, in this internet age, we are all our own agents, our own publicists… each one of us has the same chance, right? The same access to the communal megaphone? Except it does not seem to work like that. In a world in which we all have access to mass connection, it has remains as true as ever that the media IS the message.

Art that challenges can not play by the same rules. It must find other ways to support and sustain itself.

It is for this reason that I am involved in the Proost project, which is an attempt to network and bring together a community of artists around the intersection between faith and social justice. This is not about selling product (although this has to be part of it) rather it is about finding a collective voice.

This meet up is a chance to be part of what Proost might become. We would love you to be part of it.

Saturday will be a day for networking, sharing ideas and making art together.

There will be a ceilidh in the evening!

Sunday will be outward facing, inviting the wider community of Castlemilk into spaces we have created. There will be live Raku firings and other installations.

We are very grateful to St Oswalds, Kings Park Parish Church and to the wider diocese for hosting and trusting us.

For more information, check this out…

“Given what we know” pop up art exhibition…

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Chris Goan

The art world here in the UK has a bit of a new trend, in the form of pop up art exhibition spaces, typically in old shops. Accross the Clyde from where we live there are two such spaces. They tend to get booked very quickly, so we booked some slots. Then we began to wonder…

Our son-in-law James makes ceramics ‘inspired’ by trauma following spending years as an oceanographer, watching the arctic icesheets melt. Meanwhile, our art and my poetry was constantly trying to explore themes of brokenness and earth connectedness. We started to wonder about a joint exhibition…

…but then we started to think bigger and invited some others to join us.

Jules Cadie with his landscape inspired paintings

Jenny Philips with her stunning playful portraits

Karen Komurcu with her beautiful linocuts

Raine Clarke with her printmaking and general creative magnificence.

Paul Knight with his creative explosion of ceramics, sculpture and ink drawings

Yvonne Lyon who is not content with being a singer-songwriter, so also makes stunning abstract art.

Here is the brief for the exhibition, based around a poem that some might recognise.

“Given what we know and what we fear about the end of things we hold dear, we will look to the birds. We will walk the woods that remain, and we will sing”

How do we respond to a world in omni-crisis in which our politics, our economics, our spirituality – even our protest movements – all seem broken?

In a world polarised and splintered by algorithms, what does goodness look like? We know there are no easy answers to these questions.

Perhaps, like us, you are experiencing hope as a rare and hard to reach commodity.

In this context, we need our artists and our poets more than ever…

Launch evening

On Monday the 12th of May, we will be having a launch evening in the exhibition space. There will be live music and Poetry, not to mention the odd tipple. Watch social media for more details!

If you can join us, please do!

Proost through lent…

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Chris Goan

I have been loving the start of the daily lent posts over on the proost.community blog. If you are needing something to give pause and focus during this season, you might want to check it out.

Even better, we are looking for contributions- poems, music, art, anything really.

Because today’s post was my poem, I thought I would replicate it here.

Spring window, Otter artwork by Sarah Woods.

This morning, up here in Scotland at least, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the sea flat calm. If you had no connection to the world we are part of – if we were truly able to live in this moment alone – then it would be a day to truly glory in. In an age of smart phones and media feeds, many of us find this impossible. There is a background noise to our times that is oppressive. I will not list the reasons for this – you know already.

There is something that unites many people on all sides of the political spectrum just now – a sense that things are not right, that deep within our culture, our economics, our political systems, our ways of living life, something is not working.

Does this dichotomy remind anyone of anything? How about the beginning of 2020?

That was another glorious spring, with a different kind of oppressive background noise. It might be difficult sometimes to remember, this is not the first time that humans have lived like this. This is not the first epoch of injustice, of super-rich so-called-superheros, of wars and division making. Think about it.

So this morning I offer one of my own poems, written back in that 2020 springtime. It became part of a book illustrated by Si Smith.

Human races

The upright ape ascends from knapped flint to
Silicon chip. He scratches sonnets in split slate and
Solves problems (almost) as fast as he makes them.
His alchemy promised gold, but instead just turned the
Lights on, lighting a road ahead called Progress.

There is nothing new under the sun; the circle is still
Unbroken. Empires rise whilst others fall; ours was
Not the first at all. It turns out that our times were never
Linear (just oscillation) and that for every page of
Knowledge gained, another is forgotten.

But what are we, if not whisps of the same Spirit?
We carry in us the same am-ness as all things that ever were,
Hidden under thin skin and hubris, waiting for those moments
Beneath stars or trees or tenderness when we remember;
It is all about connection.

Image by Si Smith, from ‘After the Apocalypse’.

Not Messiah, but memory…

Posted on March 7, 2025 by Chris Goan

Clear felled plantation, Glen Massan, Argyll

It has been a while since I have posted any new poetry here. This is not because I am not still writing, rather because the way that poetry allows me to explore ideas (which this blog is primarily about) fluctuates.

Today however, I am going to share a brand new poem, which makes some rather profound theological statements – ones that I know many of my friends will find troubling.

I’m not going to explore them here – at least, not yet. I am not even sure that I agree with them all just now.

This is one of the gifts of poetry – it can become it’s own voice, its own person. As well as a way of exploring then externalising, poetry can go further than this, and be part of a dialogue even with its author.

The dialogue does not even need to find agreement. It might be possible to hold more than one perspective – as if our theological constructs are just different poems.

It is in this space that this poem sits just now. In committing the words to keyboard and screen, I am able to stand back and consider them as if they were not mine.

Except they are mine. In writing them, I was consciously breaking through some barriers into places that feel new.

Christus

.

Not Messiah, but memory –

You are what we once forgot.

Woodsmoke.

A curve of earth

Towards completeness.

.

Not God, but goodness –

You are what we left behind.

Compost.

A fecundity of light

Awakes this forest floor.

.

Not Risen, but wide open –

We are not just the sum of skin.

Mycelium.

An animal whom, despite of evolution

Finds value most in kindness.

.

Not Saviour but revelator –

We search the stars in vain.

Insemination.

A pulse pounds insistently when

There should by rights be silence

.

CG March 2025

Art as evolution…

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Chris Goan

Over the past few years I have been grappling with a new craft. Even though we have run a business making pottery for about a decade, Michaela was the potter really whilst just worked around the edges, helping out with some of the donkey work. My areas of creativity were outside the use of actual clay. Then it all changed.

First, I began working with a different clay body- with much more ‘grog’ mixed in (ground down fired clay.) This was much more forgiving than the white stoneware clay that Michaela loves so much, more plastic and willing to hold shape – or at least I think so. Michaela might protest. These qualities of the grogged clay mean that building bigger vessels is that bit easier, but also this kind of clay also has the capacity to cope with so much more thermal shock, meaning that alternative firing methods are possible… so I started making big old pots and trying to fire them in pits dug in the garden, with mixed success!

Then I discovered raku.

Time for a short introduction to clay firing.

Most pottery is fired in kilns, either electic, gas or more rarely, wood fired. All three methods introduce variations to the process and to how the glazes in particular react, due to the conditions created, for example the degree of oxygen present during the firing.

Using a purpose build kilns allows careful control of the temperature, which in the case of our electric kiln will step up around 100 degrees per hour, then cool down over a long period of time. This means that failures in the form of cracking (or even exploding) pots are minimised and colours from glazes are reliable and predictable.

There are other methods however, most of which require specialist clays. These include pit firing/barrel firing, saggar firing and most drramatic of all, raku firing.

Raku, meaning ‘easy” in Japanese, involves heating up a previously fired pot to 1000 degrees in an insulated container- typically a barrel or a dustbin – using a gas burner. The pot is then removed and placed in a sealed contained along with combustable materials. The oxides and glazes applied to the pot will then react in the oxygen depleted conditions to form bright colours, crackles and textures.

The thing is about this kind of pottery, it is always shifting, changing – it never quite arrives at a destination. It is art by experiementation and evolution. Perhaps all art is like this, but let me explain what I mean.

Functional pottery might be understood as the means to perfect a process in order to create a usable shape. As such, potters are developing their shapes and glazes to make their versions of archetypal forms. There is art and beauty in this that is beyond my skills. I look in wonder at many of the things that people are able to make. I hold their mugs in my hands as if they were grails. This is not what I am trying to do.

The pottery I am making is not really in puruit of shape or colour (even though both are essential elements) rather they are chasing after meaning. So when I make a pot, I am not asking if it is a ‘good’ pot, I am asking if it carrys any meaning for me. Has it told a story? Has it opened up a space or framed something that asks questions that I find important?

Let me tell you, this kind of art can drive you mad.

It is rarely sarisfied and never completed. There are no real reference points for comparison, other than whether someone is prepared to pay money for it.

The evolution thing I mentioned before suggests an ascendancy, in which we get ‘better’ and certainly I have learned through lots of mistakes and failures, so that I at least make different mistakes now rather than the same ones. I am also slightly more able to steer the chaos, but as I look back on some of the things I made previously, I wonder if I have gone in the wrong direction since. Perhaps I should have made more of the same?

But who am I kidding… this is not an option. The quest I am on is always after meaning, and so I have to search for these in new shapes, new ideas.

I have a secret weapon however, in that our pots use poetry. This alows me to set up an interplay between words, form and colour in such a way as to gather meaning more directly. In other words, I can cheat.

One last thing about this evolutionary quest- it is entirely addictive.

There may come a time when I am done with it – music was like this for me once – but for now, if a couple of days goes by without me spending significant amounts of time in pursuit of my clay meanings, I am anxious for a fix.

In the spirit of charity, it is possible you may be interested in helping out this addict in his continuing quest.

Some of our work is available in the website shop, here.

Much of our larger work is simply too big for us to make available through an on-line shop – It is not really ‘postable’ after all – these are more likely to be things we take to ceramics shows or place in galleries (and we work with some fantastic galleries!)

Perhaps the best way though might be to come and visit us. Drop us a line first and see what we have in our storage shed. There may well be a bargain or two to be had!

New Proost poetry podcast stream…

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Chris Goan

Annoucing a new poetry thing (and looking for collaborators)

Before Christmas (on this blog and elsewhere) we curated a series of beautiful contributions of poems, videos and songs produced by what is starting to feel like a developing Proost community. It was a lovely thing to be part of and this has given us an interesting template for future collaborative work.

During this run of daily posts, in the busy days of preparation, when it seems we have so little time for reflection, we released two poetry podcasts. These followed a simple format – three poets each reading two poems then talking about them in the round and allowing them to take us into deeper connection. I participated in both and they were profund, beautiful and even sacred.

If you have not had the chance to listen to them yet (and given the pre-Christmas pressure, you are forgiven) then here they are.

The first featured two Australian poets, Talitha Fraser and Stevie Wills. It was extraordinary.

The next featured two old friends of mine, Mark Berry and Ali Matthew. There was no guarantee that the magic of the first poetry pod would be repeated, but afterwards it felt like I was emerging from a great forest or an ancient cathedral.

In reflecting on these sessions, we think there is so much here that we want to continue. The sense of community, a genuine exchange of hearts, the way that poetry always takes us deeper, the conversation about things that matter, the mutual ancouragement of voices and poems that might otherwise never be heard. The deep generous spirituality woven through it all.

In other words, these podcasts seem to gather so much of what we hope that the new Proost is all about…

…so we want to make this a new regular podcast stream.

The idea is to develop a small team of people to ‘chair’ these discussions and for each podcast to involve at least two more poets on each episode. To connect with these poets, we will be casting the net as wide as possible, looking to connect with poetic voices who are exploring spirituality through this medium – after all, is not poetry first and foremost a spiritual discipline?

If you are interested in this, please drop me a line. If you know of other poets that we should be talking to, then it would be great to hear about them.

How this all develops will depend on the community that gathers around it – as with all Proost activities – but it genuinely feels as though this simple format offers a brand new way to do reflection and spiritual adventure.

Proost advent 20…

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Chris Goan

Following the tradition of calling in favours from family, Chris asked his son Will to record himself singing this re-written version of everyone’s old favourite carol ‘In the bleak midwinter’… Will (who is a trad music player in various bands) had sung this version previously and does a simply stunning version here, somehow more powerful in its stark urban simplicity.

He recorded it on his phone inside a Glasgow tenement flat which he and his girlfriend Rachel are in the middle of renovating. It has no kitchen or bathroom, but it does have a piano.

The words are below…

Bleak midwinter

What can I give him, wealthy as I am?

Does he need an i-phone or a well-aged Parma ham?

Should I bring him trainers, a pair of brand-new jeans?

Or Halo for the X-box (whatever the hell that means)

In a tower block in Camden, a woman breaks her heart

Her credit score is hopeless, her marriage fell apart

Her cupboards all lie empty, her clothes are wafer thin

Her kids can thank the food bank for turkey from a tin

If I were a kind man, I would bring good cheer

I would house the homeless, if for only once a year

I’d buy my cards from Oxfam, for virtue is no sin

I’d send some Christmas pudding to poor old Tiny Tim

In the bleak midwinter, frosty winds still moan

And Mr Wilson’s waited ages to get the council on the phone

He’s worried cos his boiler has given up the ghost

And since Mabel got dementia, she feels cold more than most

If I were a wise man, I would do my part

I’d sell that gold and incense and invest it for a start

In gilt-edged annuities and solid pension schemes

For without good fiscal planning, what can ever be redeemed?

In a lock-up by the roadside a bastard-child is born

To another teenage mother whose future looks forlorn

A host of heavenly angels up high in star-strewn sky

Sing blue-scale hallelujahs as lorries thunder by

Music and spirituality…

Posted on June 21, 2024 by Chris Goan

This week and next week there will be two Proost podcast episodes released, featuring interviews with musicians. The first one (out already) is with the rather wonderful Ant Clifford, of the band Lofter. Next week we will hear from our lovely friend Yvonne Lyon.

These chats are part of our on-going pondering as to the shape and purpose of a revival of Proost, an old publishing organisation. It might be interesting to note that before the old Proost took on the role of publishing loads of written material, video and animation etc. it was first concieved of as a record label.

The questions we are trying to explore are some of these;

What role does music take in our spiritual lives? More than just soundtrack, might it actually shape us in real and meaningful ways? If so, how?

What kinds of music might we want to showcase? Who might help us navigate a world we know little about, particularly the music being made by non-white,non-male, non-middle-class people like us?

What is the difference between worship music and ‘music of the spirit’ of the kind we are most interested in?

Who is making this kind of music? Are there people out there who should be heard, but are struggling with an indifferent music money machine?

Is there a need for a simple network to support grass-roots music that seeks to make a difference?

We have an inkling (particularly following these two conversations) that musicians need connection, just like all artists do. In fact, there may be particular reasons why musicians need this more than most. The music business has taken such a pounding in the last few years. The rise of streaming services has placed all the earning power out of reach of all but the biggest stars, and the pandemic left many performing artists in a hole. Meanwhile rising energy costs are forcing many vanues that previously supported live music to close.

As Yvonne points out, music is also relational at heart. The image of the tortured bedroom genius, making tracks on a laptop, might have some basis in reality, but actually, music flies when it is made in community, when it sparks between different creative inputs on different instruments. It comes alive when people listen. It creates a space in which people can transcend, almost uniquely.

But it can also be a hard road, and musicians need one another.

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Tag Archives: poetry