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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Articles 
Michael Austin: Theatre & Liturgy
Keith Ramsay: The postwar revival of the Mystery Plays
Fiona Shaw: Some weeks ago I flew to Ireland
Vicky Ireland: The place of live theatre in the emotional world of the child
Peri Aston: Things fall together
James Roose-Evans: a ritual grows as we grow
Anthony Masters: Community Acting
Kate Partridge: The Prodigal Daughter
 
Poetry
Sheila Cassidy: The Kingdom of God
 
Liturgy ‘The play’s the thing’, compiled by Michael Sadgrove
Film reviews Schindler’s List and Shadowlands.

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Articles
Shakuntala Banaji: Universal justice. Utopia or reality?
David Haslam: The struggle against apartheid
Andrew Radford: Baby milk action
Dee Price: Light a candle, curse the darkness
Stephen Hancock: Swords into ploughshares
Edmond L Browning: Calling the Church to stewardship
Thomas Cullinan: When you eat this bread …
 
Poetry
Philip Allin: Ex libris
Virginia Rounding: Surrounded
Anne Richards: Solomon’s judgement
Jean Blanchard: A poem for Holy Week
Geoffrey Smith: Under the fell
 
Liturgy A liturgy for peace in a time of trouble. Doreen Hudson-Tobin
Book reviews
‘Witness against the Beast’ E P Thompson
‘Psalms of patience, protest and praise’. John Bell
‘Engaging the Powers’ by Walter Wink.

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In the spring of 2026, a stunning exhibition of modern religious art was mounted in Guildford, displaying 25 works by such world-class artists as Graham Sutherland, Elisabeth Frink, Ceri Richards and Maggi Hambling. As part of this major event the poet, Alwyn Marriage, was commissioned to write poems to accompany each work of art at the exhibition, and these poems proved so popular that they have now been published as a collection, along with reproductions of the full-colour artworks to which they were a response.

If you would like to explore some of the art at a deeper level, there are also a dozen longer reflections on some of the paintings which can be reached through the Art UK website.

From Darkness to Light was published by Oversteps Books on behalf of St Mary's Church, Guildford, in February 2026.

Please click here to contact Alwyn.

 

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Articles
John S Spong: Monogamy
Susan Howatch: Clerical Casualties
Ann Lewin: Sex and the single Christian
Alwyn Marriage: In praise of Sexuality and Spirituality
Ruth H Sihlangu: Adolescent sexuality in Zimbabwe
Elizabeth Stuart: Bearing the marks of crucifixion – or resurrection
Richard Holloway: Can the Church lead the way towards a new sexual ethic?
 
Poetry
Margaret Connor: The First Time
Andrew Salmon: Helen
Andrew Salmon: Adultery
Rupert M Loydell: Touching Truth
 
Liturgy  Meditations by Jim Cotter
Book reviews
‘Daring to speak love’s name’ ed Elizabeth Stuart
‘Partners in Protests’ by Diana Collins
Exhibition review
Eric Gill, Barbican Gallery.

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Articles
David Bleakley: Beyond work
Eileen Maybin: Weaving through debt
Ricarda Leask: Work
Geoffrey Brogden: Givers – not receivers. The potential of the unemployed
Robin Richardson” Quite an Agenda – jobs and racial justice
Chris Beedle: Overwork
Sr Eileen Mary: Who am I?
 
Poetry
Mary Sheepshanks: Dust Storm
Geoffrey Daniel: Madonna of the Washing
Jean Harrison: That human hands have made
David Lethbridge: On a mantlepiece
 
Liturgy Some modern psalms
 
Film review Sister Act
Book reviews
‘What lies ahead – listening to refugees’ by Christians Aware
‘Still following Christ in a consumer society’ by John F Kavanagh
‘Celebrating Common Prayer’.

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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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