Q&A with Janet Morley

December 21, 2018 Snehal Chavan

Janet Morley, author of Haphazard by Starlight, is on our blog today chatting writing and Christmas traditions. 

1. What were your favourite books to read when you were little?

Well, A.A.Milne’s Winnie the Pooh was big, as well as those great little books of verse, Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young. Maybe my interest in poetry started there? I also remember being fascinated by a pictorial version of Pilgrim’s Progress. I can still recall lots of those images. Many were just line drawings but occasionally there were some full colour, full page pictures. Christian fighting Apollyon was deliciously scary. C S Lewis’ Narnia books dominated by imagination for years. I even started a Narnia club, and wrote a fan letter to Lewis. He actually replied, saying if he were in my club he would be Puddleglum.

2. Tell us about a few of your family holiday traditions – what makes them special?

We always had a full fortnight, and it always had to be the seaside, but not in the same place. We tended to go to Holiday Fellowship venues, where you were booked in to a house party at a guest house. Meals were shared, there was the option to take part in walking excursions, and there were evening games, table tennis tournaments and guest-led concerts. We children adored being in a huge house, with plenty of others to play with, and the chance to ‘escape’ our parents. This tradition gave me a love of walking and an appreciation of different parts of our beautiful coastal island.

As for current family traditions relating to Christmas – our big gathering for Christmas usually happens a week or so beforehand, and these days it involves six grandchildren. We can just about squeeze into our Sheffield house and our favourite tradition is playing Murder in the Dark (obviously only possible to play properly in winter). Apart from the satisfaction of getting to play the murderer, the detective or the corpse, the children are delighted by finding that their adults ‘play’ properly, getting into role and finding ways to answer questions misleadingly. I hope we are not training them to become politicians.

3. Why was it important to write Haphazard by Starlight?

This Advent book came about as a companion volume to my Lent book, The Heart’s Time. Advent is increasingly a time when Christians want to undertake some particular spiritual reading to prepare for the major festival of Christmas. Fun as it can be for families to get together in the dead of winter, Christmas at its heart celebrates the birth of the world’s saviour. In a world that is full of turmoil, deceit, and a curious admiration for strong male leaders who despise any checks on their power, the Christian message speaks of the coming of a powerless, vulnerable baby as the source of all our hope. So Advent is a preparation time to reflect on all of this, and taking a poem a day is a good way to do this. Not all the poems are consciously Christian, but they all engage with themes that Christians would do well to address.

4. Whose writing do you look to for inspiration?

I could say every single poet whose work I have selected for my book. I do have favourites: George Herbert always finds a place, and so does Christina Rossetti; both wrestle with and celebrate God in a way I can identify with. U. A. Fanthorpe is the mistress of understatement, and Charles Causley writes ballads of deceptive simplicity that carry a powerful charge. I like Rowan Williams’ poetry, perhaps especially his inspired translations from poets writing in Welsh. As for the idea of writing commentaries to poems chosen for an anthology, I have definitely been influenced by Mark Oakley and also by Don Paterson, who has written a stunning commentary on Shakespeare’s whole sonnet sequence.

5. Which book have you been recommending to everyone lately?

Well, this one isn’t about poetry; it’s about death – which sounds depressing, but really isn’t. Here is Sheffield we have a literary festival in October and I went to hear Professor Sue Black, who is well-known as a broadcaster. She is a professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology (she was the lead British anthropologist during the investigations into war crimes in Kosovo). Her talk, and her book, ‘All that remains – a life in death’ completely wowed me. She speaks with great tenderness about life and death, but with lots of humour and down to earth practicality. She is not a religious believer, but she has really faced the nature of mortality and the consequent priorities for her life in a way that can inspire us all.