Psalms for the City: Original poetry inspired by the places we call home

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Good ideas come from that sort of experience. When you’re free and relaxed, they come forward like nobody’s business.

He was downbeat. Said something about it being “hard to be an artist” – may have used those exact words, or something similar. I’m not sure. It’s a long time ago. But whatever the words he used, I remember the feeling: it felt as if he said: “You, Flintoff, cannot be an artist.” Mr Flintoff drew around 250 pictures in hospital including the view from the window of his hospital room and pictures of his thoughts about what he had imagined doing to himself. After being discharged, despite not being a religious man, Mr Flintoff found solace in going on walks to churches, and his drawings took a biblical turn. On the subject of being a mere transmitter… I’m standing here saying stuff I owe to other people. The painter Billy Childish told me something once which provided a lovely sense of relief. He said it taken him years and years to stop caring what other people thought of his paintings – and it took him a few more years to stop caring what he himself thought of his paintings. The editor who commissioned my next book, Elizabeth N., asked if I might record a short video about it, to share at an internal sales meeting. It’s for a slot called “A Moment That Changed Me”. Here (below) is the copy I filed. Naturally, the piece as it eventually appears – if it eventually appears!– may be quite different. But I thought you might like to see the words just as I sent them.

The Original Talk, In Full

Blimey, what a reputation to live up to – “a master of improvisation”! That doesn’t allow me any room to fail does it? Mr Flintoff has found particular comfort in the Annunciation, where Mary is told by the angel Gabriel that she's going to have the Son of God as a baby. “When I was not well, I found that a really beautiful thing because there are two parallel stories. The intimate, approachable book provides a collection of day-to-day songs, or psalms, that fit our busy contemporary lives. Always thoughtful, often celebratory, sometimes painful: these rueful verses - and their gorgeous, witty illustrations - build up something both serious and delightful.' - Fiona Sampson, author of Common Prayer and Come Down

Starting with an excursion from North London to Westminster Abbey, Participants will be invited to ‘walk’ with John-Paul all over the UK’s capital, and draw meaningful images onto the city, revealing the hidden treasure of London, the magic of the most seemingly nondescript areas. I started planting daffodils after my nephew took his own life and now hundreds of others will be able to do the same’ I would hate to do that job, and if by making a short video I can help the sales team feel motivated to mention this book – well, I’m delighted. Like the work of a modern-day Chaucer, John-Paul’s poetry in Psalms for The City, contains diverse and colourful vignettes of life in 2022. Inspired by the Luttrell Psalter, a book of illustrated psalms from the late Middle Ages, which includes marginal images showing everyday life from that period, Psalms for The City contains John Paul’s own marginal drawings of urban life in 2022 alongside his psalms, like a modern-day medieval manuscript.Open and honest, these are modern day psalms that chart John-Paul’s discovery that the extraordinary places welcomed the ordinary, and that when we’re looking closely, the ordinary places can become extraordinary. Born out of John-Paul’s recovery from a metal breakdown, Psalms for The City is a love-song to our cities, to the relationship between poetry and prayer, and the fact that we are all beings with spiritual health that deserves tending to.