Malcolm Guite 750AT

National speakers at South Creake church

2018: The parish church in South Creake will be hosting two free lectures this autumn and anyone interested is warmly invited to attend.

 
 The South Creake Lectures return for their fourth season this autumn. Promoted as food for the mind and soul these are free lectures to which anyone can turn up. The aim is to attract speakers of national renown to the Church of Our Lady Saint Mary, South Creake, one talking on a religious theme and one on a secular topic.
 
Fr Clive Wylie, Rector of South Creake, said: ‘This lecture series has been a tremendous success and we have attracted large audiences from all over Norfolk and further afield to hear fascinating and sometimes controversial ideas. These are not fund-raising events but represent the wish of the church to give something of value back to the community.’
 
Dr Malcolm Guite, pictured above, will present the first lecture on Friday October 5 entitled Imagination Bodies Forth’: Incarnation and Poetry.
 
Starting with Shakespeare’s playful definition of poetry, poet and priest Malcolm Guite explores the connections and resonance between the workings of the poetic imagination and the Christian affirmation that in Christ the Word has been made flesh.
 
What is the relation between poetry and Spirituality? To what extent can we trust the imagination, alongside reason, as a truth-bearing faculty? His lecture will be illustrated with examples of classic and contemporary poetry.
 
Dr Guite is a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge. He has written eight books, five of which are his own poetry. His most recent, Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 2017, is a biography of the poet. He also plays in Cambridge rock band Mystery Train.
 
Nick Hardwick 680ATThe second lecture is on Friday October 26, when Professor Nick Hardwick, right, will speak on “What’s Going on Behind Prison Walls?”
 
Nelson Mandela famously said: “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
 
The media has been full of reports of deteriorating conditions in prisons with rising levels of suicide, violence and drug availability. There has been controversy and surprise about decisions to release some notorious offenders on parole. So, what's really going on behind prison walls - and would we be happy to be judged by how we currently treat our 'lowest citizens' as Mandela suggests?
 
Nick Hardwick, who is Professor in Criminal Justice, Royal Holloway University of London, and was Chair of the Parole Board for England and Wales from 2016 - 2018, and before that Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, will aim to take his audience through prison gates and into the parole hearing room to discuss the practical and ethical issues of how we should treat those who offend against us.
 
Entry to both lectures is free and unticketed, and they both start at 7pm.
 
The Church of Our Lady Saint Mary is on Church Lane, South Creake NR21 9LX
 
 
Visit : www.southcreake.org
 
The photo of Malcom Guite, top, is courtesy of Lancia Smith.
 
 



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