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Green, Red, Gold: A novel in 101 sonnets by William Radice

Everything is linked: Hugh Rayment-Pickard is delighted by a novel written in verse

William Radice
Flambard Press £7
(978-1-873226-78-0)

THE RELATIONSHIP between poetry, sex, and God is as old as the Song of Solomon, but few Christians dare to think about it. William Radice is not afraid to enter this territory in his magnificent verse- novel Green, Red, Gold, which is a profound exploration of the ambiguities and ambivalences of love.

Most religious sentiment is just too prim, as Radice explains:

The divine body of the world.
 A poet inspects
It at his peril. Everything, layer
by layer,
Is linked: good and bad, beauty
and ugliness.
Religions try to clothe it — in
garments of peace,
Hope, love. They fail to conceal
the mess.

The story of Green, Red, Gold is one of unconsummated infidelity: the narrator tells of his love both for his wife and for a lover with whom he has a chaste relationship. In the tangle of his confused loves — in “the effort and risk of dancing undirected. Human staggering steps; not God-perfected” — the narrator finds meaning, truth, and goodness. It is reality and honesty that will save us, Radice implies, not fantasy (religious or other).

The novel is written in sonnet form, but the poetic scheme never intrudes on the elegant sweep of the narration. When I finished reading, I felt as though I’d read a heavy-weight novel, not a mere 60 pages of poetry. The verse is packed with dense ideas and feelings, but the language always feels light and effortless. Lightness and gravity are combined.

These poems are Christian, but not in any conventional or con-fessional sense. The book is saturated in religious reflection: on faith (“faith is unscripted — a start, a beginning, a seed”); on mystery (“mystery fills me with dread”); and intimations of the incarnate Christ (“the deeper Word Underlying our friendship — I perceived its shadowy ground Wherever we were.”) But don’t expect traditional pieties:

I have something of Abelard’s
pride, vanity,
Self-pity, self-deception
cockiness, jesting im-
pulsiveness.
He prodded religion with logic; I
use poetry

Radice is an explorer, willing to think, feel, and speak at a tangent to dogmatic religion. Like R. S. Thomas, he writes from a liminal space at the edge of Christian practice and belief. And readers of Thomas will, I think, find in Radice’s verse-novel rich resources for religious reflection.

The Revd Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard is Area Dean of Kensington, London.



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