I’m sitting in the chapel with my dad. Almost every pew is full. It’s pitch black outside, and we’re sitting in candlelight. The flickering lights glance off the statues of Our Lady, Jesus and St Joseph, and from the corner of my eye it looks as if the statues are gently swaying in the shadows.

It’s an October night in the 70s, and we’re in the middle of a 9 day novena, praying for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. The repetition of the Rosary prayers calms my mind. The priest swings the censer, and the smell of incense fills the air. Then he starts to chant in Latin. I don’t understand the meaning of the words, but the soothing rhythm lulls me into a beautiful, quiet space. Everything has slighted shifted into a magical version of itself.

And as the gentle half-light and the chants and smells flow around me, I slip into a different state of being. I am still and at peace. My soul is calmed. My mind is clear. I can almost hear a faint whisper calling to me. And I am happy and content.

It was many years before I realised that this is the place where all my poetry springs from. The rhythm, the awakening of the senses, the quietening of the noise, the sense of magical possibilities, and the gentle slipping into a different state where I can almost catch the whispers of something more are the source of my creative spark.

The realisation came to me after I had two heart attacks in a week at the age of 43. I stumbled onto a spiritual journey. I started to meditate and found myself slipping into that same state, using the rhythm of my body to get me there, sensing something beyond the everyday, and hearing the whispers of something more. I quickly saw the parallels between how I felt in meditation and how I felt when I was engrossed in my writing. I realised writing poetry was a living meditation for me, one that had sprung from those childhood experiences.

I’d long since turned my back on my Catholic upbringing. But I began to realise it had given me strong foundations, not just for life but for my creative life. As I started to gather ideas for my fourth poetry collection, Under the Blue Seraphim, I was struggling to make peace between my Catholic upbringing and my newfound spirituality that offered me a direct path to God, to something Higher.

My writing has always helped me to make sense of my life, so I turned to my poetry. I approached Belfast (St Anne’s) Cathedral and asked if I could do a writing residency there. This Church of Ireland cathedral seemed like the perfect place to gently challenge me. It was just a few steps away from Catholic traditions, but the military flags hanging from the ceiling were a symbol of how it was in others ways a different world.

My writing process started by absorbing myself in the cathedral and being curious about everything. I asked lots of questions. I studied each nook and cranny. I filled notebook after notebook with information, insights, ideas. I fell in love with its beautiful objects – the Titanic Pall, the Majury prayer book, the way the Spire of Hope disappears when you take a photo of it. I also had my favourite place – the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, captured in Under the Blue Seraphim:

‘…I come to sit in the quiet, to tilt 
my head back and gaze at the blue seraphim 
who sing, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, 
as the sun pours through the lion and the lamb 
and lights a path forward.’

After this first flurry of activity, I thought it might be more interesting to write about what people don’t see. I explored the maze of basement rooms, walked up the hidden stairs to the triforium and climbed up to the roof, where I stood in the shadow of the Spire of Hope. I spent time with the team who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to run the cathedral. I studied the visitors and tourists. I wrote several poems that didn’t make it into the book because I felt they didn’t go deep enough. There was something more, itching to be explored.

My favourite object in the cathedral started my questioning of what I was really drawn there to write about. This was The Coventry Cross, made from a nail from the bombed out ruins of Coventry Cathedral after World War II.

The Coventry Cross

Did you want stained glass windows, 
archways, pillars, gold and silver, 

or did you long for the simplicity 
of a cross made from a nail,

the ease of a grass verge 
and a sheltering hedge,

knowing we would find you 
in the silence and the stillness? 

Often when I’m writing, two disparate ideas merge together to create something new. In the cathedral I became obsessed by hands – hands holding chalices, a welcoming hand, hands lighting candles, hands in prayer, the hands of the Martin sisters, lying on their backs, placing each tessera in the mosaics.

I initially loved sitting in the library writing, but I was very aware I was surrounded by portraits of men. When I discovered the women in the cathedral, such as the Martin sisters, the women who created the Titanic Pall and St Anne herself, I wanted to give them a voice, and I started some draft poems. But it was the woman at the centre of my life who was finally given voice.

My residency started a few months after the Covid lockdowns. My mum had passed away from cancer during lockdown. We’d nursed her at home during her last weeks. In the emptiness and silence of the cathedral, I could not escape my grief. I found a way to honour her passing through writing the opening poems in this collection, My Hand Alone. This is from Midnight:

‘Your rosary beads are lost in your duvet. 
You haven’t spoken in days, but you still 
fumble for the beads, drop them again,

and as your shaking hand 
lifts a glass to your mouth, 
I fold my hand over yours to steady it,

and your lips meet the glass 
in a final kiss before sleep.’

I moved out of the library and immersed myself in the cathedral, sitting in quiet corners, sometimes in silent contemplation, sometimes watching everything around me. I questioned again why I was there, what I was searching for. I explored this in Are You There, Beloved? This compounded when I went to a Sunday service. It reminded me I was in a place of worship, not just a tourist destination. I sat alone for an hour after the service, and this led to the poem In the Almost Silence. I was both searching for something and trying to run away from it at the same time. The things I was running away from – God, love, meaning – were the rich vein I need to explore in my poems.

During my residency, the after-effects of lockdown were still there. The chairs were socially distanced. People were still nervous about being out and about. The tourists had not yet returned. This meant I spent a lot of time alone in the cathedral. Sitting in the silence, there was nowhere to run. The whispers grew louder. They pushed me to move beyond the surface level and explore the spiritual threads that had run through my life.

I was often on my knees, both literally and figuratively, as I weaved my way through my life experiences that had led to many moments of grief and loss. I looked back on how I’d yo-yoed to God and away from God over many years, which is voiced in Evening Devotions. I interrogated what I believed and why. I went on an inner pilgrimage. I journeyed from grief to hope. I felt that in the cathedral, God was really found in the people, which is the idea at the heart of Are You There, Beloved?

Light became my second obsession – the way it flowed through the stained-glass windows, the dramatic change in light from sunlight to rain, the shadow-filled darkness of the autumn evenings that reminded me of my younger self in the chapel. Light appears in many poems, including Apostate, as a symbol of hope:

‘I am cold to the bone. 
And then the sun filters in

through the faces of the prophets 
and I follow the shafts of light…'

At the same time, I was having beautiful and profound inner experiences in meditation. I struggled with how to translate the ethereal into something concrete. I slowly realised that my experiences in meditation were a story in themselves – visceral, visual experiences, often with shamanic overtones.

My inner spiritual journey merged with my obsession about light and became a longer sequence, Lightpath, that forms the second half of my collection. It ends as it starts but with the realisation:

‘What I searched for was always here with me 
in the forest, where the fierce sun fights its way through 
the branches’ intermeshed limbs, 
burns a lightpath…’

I believe writing is an act of pilgrimage. A writer is a seeker, setting out on the journey as an act of faith. You hope you will receive some insights along the way and experience a transformation as you journey. You pray you will get to the end and that it will have been worth it.

I hope the reader experiences this book as a pilgrimage, that it in some small way it helps them reframe their experiences, find faith in life and in themselves again, and maybe, just maybe, hear the whispers of something more calling to them.