AS THE start of Advent approaches, this week’s podcast returns to Malcolm Guite’s journey through “The Great O Antiphons”: seven prayers which the Church prayed during the first centuries, which called afresh for Christ to come.

Malcolm reads each of the seven prayers and reflects on them, and offers his own poetic response to each one, taken from his collection Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian year (Canterbury Press).

This talk was first broadcast last November during an online Advent retreat, hosted by the Church Times and Canterbury Press.

The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. His books include Mariner: A voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder), Love Remember: 40 poems of loss, lament and hope (Canterbury Press), and David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms (Canterbury Press).

Click the play button above to listen to this podcast. You can also listen to the Church Times Podcast on the Church Times app for iPhone and iPad, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most other podcast platforms. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.