Clarke’s Psalter

BBC Radio 4
Transmission Date Sunday 9th September 2018, 4.30pm
Repeated Saturday 15th September 2018, 11.30pm
Presented by Edward Clarke
Produced by Anna Scott-Brown

A contemporary poet navigates the relationship between spiritual understanding and poetics. Edward Clarke examines his process of engaging with the Psalms, and scrutinising his belief that poetry is the most powerful means of negotiating and making sense of ourselves, and the world, today.

Poet, Edward Clarke

Psalm 70 by Edward Clarke

                                    70

	I’d like to set you to
			The tune
		Of ‘Wolves A-Howling’,
	So you can make no tarrying,
			And hurry
		Out across
	The peaks of wild Arkansas,
	The heights of south Missouri:
	Make haste, O Lord, to help me,
	Make haste, O God, to seize me,
Can’t you see the wolves a-howling
All round my pretty little darling?
		The tail end of
		Another text
		The prelude to
		The song that’s next,
This song is but an interlude
		Of perfect prayer
	With hardly any words
	That fiddlers howl with care.
	And I would put it in
		Some wild quatrains
		To try and heed
		The word that frames
			Its words:
			Make haste,
	Let them be confused
			That chase
		My living soul,
			That howl
		And are a-howling
		All round my darling.
		Let all that seek you
		Exult and howl,
	Let God be magnified
		Inside my soul.
	As I am poor and needy
		Make haste to seize me:
	O how the wolves are howling
All around my poor little darling.

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