A Moment to Look Outside the World… In the note Sophia left with requests to be undertaken in the case of her death, she asked that a diptych of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection be made and given to St John’s Anglican Cathedral in Brisbane. An extraordinary pair of paintings by Australian artist, Peter Hudson, set in a display case exquisitely handcrafted by traditional craftsman Rob Lamont from Queensland silky oak, has therefore been given
Spoken Soul Some lights burn true, whatever the darkness. Sophia 30.07.1991--17.01.2014 Out of the Burning Bury me in garlands Of burning paper With all my pollen sparks of steel Sophia Nugent-Siegal Out of the burning fire Truth remains true Its generative spark whirls up Into
God Is With Us Sophia always loved Christmas. As a child, she had loved the joy and excitement, the thrilling expectation written into it all, but she also loved the mystery woven into the story, the sense that a great drama was being played out for us to understand, one with deep symbolic significance. As an adult and as a scholar, the significance was even more real to her. It is for this reason that
Love is Eternal “Politics and law pass, as the supremacy of the Roman Empire and her eloquently complex legal system passed. If Christ’s message had been about overthrowing or changing it, He would be as historically insignificant as a thousand of his contemporary Jewish radicals. Love, however, is eternal.” Sophia Nugent-Siegal St Mark’s Review, No. 217, Aug 2011: 112-115. It’s your birthday, Soph. Another year, another birthday
Flotsam and Jetsam UK poetry journal, Shearsman, has published another suite of poems (a sequence of eight individual poems), Flotsam and Jetsam, by Sophia in its Spring edition (Shearsman: Vols. 139 & 140). Given the formative years she had spent in England as a child, Sophia would be pleased, both as poet and historian, by the further underlining of this connection. There is a particular poignancy to Flotsam and Jetsam. Not only does it represent
To Be… An elegy by Gershon Maller, dedicated to Sophia, was recently selected for competition in the ACU Poetry Prize. The poem has now been published in the 2023 anthology, Love. In linguistics and logic, the principal copula verb (connecting subject and predicate) is, in English, the verb “to be.” I am. You are. She is. Such a little word, is, the full meaning of which is only truly apparent to us when we must live
No Coward Soul Ten years ago, ten years ago today, the machines in the ICU were turned off and Sophia died. In That Sleep… Bury me in my carapace of stone Like a molten Eleanor Without half a face Bury me in garlands Of burning paper With all my pollen sparks of steel Bury me in my mâché wings Folded into ribs of bone Netted into needles The firmament is the skin of a broken
Emmanuel Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Matthew 1:23 Every year, in churches across the world, Christian priests and pastors give sermons about the “true meaning of Christmas.” Love will be mentioned, the act of giving will figure prominently, the familiar story of the Nativity told in all its beautiful simplicity… We’ve heard it
The Turn of the World Each week I read poetry beside Sophia’s tomb, some by other poets, some by Sophia herself. Recently I have been reading a poem each week from the series Sophia wrote as a 16-year-old after visiting an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts, The Medieval Imagination. In a moment of Jungian synchronicity, the next poem in the sequence to be read a week ago was painfuly relevant to the wider world. It was
Tuesday’s child is full of grace You were born on a Tuesday. It was a Tuesday on your last birthday in this world. (How strange yet precise are the patterns of a life.) You were 22. Ten years have passed since that last birthday. You are still 22. Your sweet face looks out at us in the lovely photographs your Auntie Kaye took that day—“dear little Sophie” as one of the doctors treating you at