Poems that celebrate the outdoor life: camping, 'cycling, walking, swimming and even driving. For more information, click on the image of the book cover.

Published by Bellhouse Books. To order a copy, please use the "Contact Alwyn" link.

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Poems from throughout the year, but with a special emphasis on Christmas and winter.

Though unquestioningly devout, she's refreshingly unorthodox, irreverent, forthright.
R V Bailey

Excellent and engaging poems. William Oxley

Published by Oversteps Books. To order a copy, please use the "Contact Alwyn" link.

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A collection of poems, arranged in five sections: Energy; Other lives; On being a woman; Open air; and the Christmas story.

Six months after this book was published, Alwyn was invited to take over as Managing Editor of Oversteps. For more information, click on the image of the book cover.

Published by Oversteps Books. To order a copy, please use the "Contact Alwyn" link.

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Alwyn Marriage presents a vision of the Church as the priesthood of all believers, and argues that unless we take seriously the doctrine that all Christians are called to be priests, there is little future for the Church. She demonstrates how this inclusive vision was the basis of the Old Testament concept of God's chosen people, was restored through Jesus' calling of the first disciples and the mission of the early Church, and has been a recurring theme through reform movements ever since. For more information, click on the image of the book cover.

Published by Darton, Longman and Todd. To order a copy, please use the "Contact Alwyn" link.

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For a while this anthology was Collins’ best-selling book, and I still get requests for copies. Unfortunately I have none left, and the opportunity for a re-print was lost during the series of publishing takeovers in the 1990s. There are sometimes copies for sale on Amazon.

However, in general, copies are now like gold-dust, so if you have one that you don’t want, please let me know, so that I can pass it on to someone who does.

Published by Collins (now HarperCollins).

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Review by Thelma Laycock in the Leeds-based poetry magazine Aireings, no 22:

Refreshingly this anthology bursts upon the British poetry scene which seems to suffer from a dearth of Christian writing. Alwyn Marriage draws her collection together from two hundred poems chosen from eight and a half thousand received after publicising the anthology to churches and magazines worldwide.

New Christian Poetry is not a denominational ‘churchy’ collection. The editor presents the poetry in its widest sense, dividing it into eleven sections: The Natural World, Place, People, World Issues, Art, The Bible, Times and Festivals, Experience of God, On Being a Christian, Praise and Prayer, Bread and Wine, thus expressing that Christians are not apart from the world but are very much thrown into the turmoil of it.

Memorable among the poems for me is Jean Naylor’s ‘Contemplation’ (Experience of God) with its Hopkinsian imagery:

“I saw Him in the crushed crimson’s dawn appearing …
He comes riding
Stallion-drawn, whirl-wheeled, fleet
Sword-buckling King, re-armed in glory
I fall, love adoring at his feet.”

Presenting a contrast to that is Rosie Watson’s ‘Red Nose Day’ (World Issues) with its comic irony:

“Would God wear a nose for such a cause
Christ the Clown
our fool for God’s sake
the only one
to wear a nose on red nose day
                                  Good Friday
for the sake of Ethiopia
Yes, and much more.”

Catherine Fisher closes the section on Art with her universal poem, ‘Judas’, in which the poet sees:

“… a roundel here of Christ in Hell,
embracing a man waist-deep in fiery glass
whose medieval face turns up as if in shock …
Perhaps it is something in the kiss that makes me
wonder, if they meant it to be you.”

The poems in this collection have a very high standard and much could be said about the individual poems. I can only recommend that people buy it and read it. It is a good resource for worship and for teaching as well as for personal reflection. It is excellent and have not come across anything quite like it. I am glad to have this anthology on my bookshelves; it has presence.

 

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This is an exploration of the femininity implicit in much of the language and imagery that has traditionally been used to describe the Holy Spirit. Resisting any attempt to down-grade the Holy Spirit, who is as much God as the other two members of the Trinity, I argued in this book that only if we take seriously both the femininity of the Spirit AND the centrality of that Spirit in our understanding of God can we fully appreciate the wholeness and holiness of God in Trinity. For more information, click on the image of the book cover.

Published by SPCK. To order a copy, please use the "Contact Alwyn" link.

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In a surprising change of career some years ago, Alwyn Marriage found herself travelling the world as Chief Executive of two international literature and literacy NGOs. Looking back now on that decade of travel, she reflects in poetry on some of the wonderful people she met and projects with which she had the privilege to work.

Travelling Light won the Hedgehog Prize in the 2024 “Proper Poetry Collection Competition”.The Hedgehog Poetry Press is publishing the book on 14 November 2025.

Alwyn Marriage’s travelogue poems hold surprises, bright blessings and sensory discoveries: they are snapshots of global humanity, thriving despite inequality. An intelligent woman is forced to walk on her knees; there is peril and crime, but also a deep joy in the rich welcomes of Africa, Polynesia and South America; and always an appetite for shared song.
                                                      Jo Bell, Host, The Poetic Licence

This eye-opening collection, the fruit of global travels on behalf of NGOs in the 1990s, is astonishing in its reach and breadth of subject matter. Alwyn Marriage has braved black ants and cockroaches, sea snakes and crocodiles, and airplane pilots saying prayers, while witnessing stark examples of women’s inequality, and wondering about the pitfalls as well as the benefits of opening their eyes.

It contains moments of lyricism in many far and wide places, such as aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, when the only remaining fare is smoked salmon and Russian champagne, and swimming into a cave in Samoa, and gazing outwards from it, at the open sea. This fascinating sequence of traveller’s tales from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, and eastern Europe, demanded to be written. They are despatches from a time before the internet and social media somehow narrowed our horizons.
                                                     Greg Freeman, Write Out Loud

Please click here to contact Alwyn.

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Articles

Virginia Hoffman: Base Communities

Peter Price: UK and beyond

Margaret Walsh: Hope Community

Timothy Biles: Journey. A window on the Sudan

Ianthe Pratt: God talk and the community

Poetry

Prabhu S Guptara: Autumn

Marjorie Idle: The Murraymint

Liturgy on the theme of Listening

Book review

‘The Church in the midst of creation’ by Vincent J Donovan.

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Articles

Charles Elliott: Ideals and Idols

Hugh Wybrew: The Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe

Stephen Platten: Spirituality and Europe. A Christian dreaming

Irina Ratushinskaya: A Problem of Two Cities

Mary Garnet: Inner Room

Poetry

Jack Clemo: Sortridge Manor

John Butterfield: Euro-nightmare

Prabhu S Guptara: On seeing my first snowfall

Liturgy from ‘Women Included’

Book reviews

‘Women Included’ by the St Hilda Community

‘Patterns and examples. Quaker attitudes and European opportunities’ by Geoffrey Hubbard Swarthmore

Film review

‘Prospero’s Books’ by Peter Greenaway

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Articles
John Davies: Nationalism
Clare Amos: Jerusalem and Emmaus
Bruce Kent: Building a Global Village
Patrick Thomas: Keeping house in a cloud of witnesses
Brian Brown: Old Nationalism for New
Bede Smith: Remembering 1492, on the underside of history
Sandra Pollerman: Storytelling and Stories
Nadir Dinshaw: The land we love the most
 
Poetry
Ku Song: Midday Prayer
Ku Song:  rice field
Joan Smith: Good Friday – How Steak Gorge
Elaine Miller: The Memory of Myrrh
Margaret N Newton: Old Altar Candles
Chuck Lathrop: Come and have breakfast
Kenneth C Steven: My you
 
Liturgy from ‘Bread for Tomorrow’
 
Book reviews
‘The voices of the victims’ ed Leonardo Boff & Virgil Elizondo
‘Barbed Lines’ ed Debjanis Chatterjee & Rashida Islam
‘Paradise News’ by David Lodge

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Articles
Esther de Waal: Celtic Christianity
Sean O Duinn: Celtic Spirituality
Dafydd Elis Thomas: Re-emergence of Welsh Wales
Bob Holman: Away from the Highlands and Islands tourist route
Sally Hastings: Ireland at the Crossroads
John Bell: Post mortem
 
Poetry
R S Thomas: Afallon
R S Thomas: Retired
Davie Webster: Iona Mo Chridhe
Mary Sheepshanks: Transmission from Iona
 
Liturgy from Carmina Gadelica
 
Book reviews
‘George MacLeod’ by Ronald Ferguson
‘Sent by the Lord’ ed John Bell
‘A wide open heart’ compiled by Nadir Dinshaw.

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Articles
Carmel Heaney: Old Truths/ New Lies
Nikki Arthy: Come join the dance for justice
Brian Phillips: Taizé
Maggie Smith: L’Arche
Carol Holliday: College House
Alison Gelder: Student Cross
Claire Wilton: New Roots, Hull
Gregory Briffa: The Youth Church
Patrick Clarke: At the edge
Stephen Verney: I AM
 
Poetry
Marshall Coombs: Early Autumn Sunlight
Robin Shirley: Quaker Apples
Geoffrey Daniel: The Diary of Anne Frank
Jack Clemo: Voyages
 
Liturgy  Hymn ‘We reach out hungry hands’ by Jeremy Davies
Reviews
Book of photography ‘Pillars of the Church’ by Jane Bown
Video ‘Barriers or Bridges’ by the Columban Fathers
CD ‘Meditation in sound’ Virgin Classics.

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