To Believe... In publishing each new work for Sophia’s Notebook, a corresponding poem (or poems) is selected from Sophia’s own body of work as an accompaniment. Why? Because, as the award in her name highlights, Sophia—that born historian—believed that culture (in particular, art and literature) represents an ongoing conversation across time. As T. S. Eliot stated in his seminal essay on literary tradition, the significance of any poet must be interpreted in terms of the
Finding the Light Paul Kingsnorth’s* stunning poem, Hymn of Entry, is everything Sophia would wish in a work for Sophia’s Notebook.The poem fulfills each of the principles laid out on the splashdown page of this website (principles which Sophia herself lived so fully): Be brave. Seek truth. Love wisdom. Live beauty. Courage. Truthfulness. Wisdom. Beauty. How necessary these are, how precious, and how rare. In its fierce loveliness, Paul’s poem really does speak to the
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
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
There is a burning in the garden… Two of Sophia’s poems were printed in the journal of creative and spiritual exploration, Jesus the Imagination, published by the US Center for Sophiological Studies, Angelico Press (Vol Vl: MMXXll, pp 92-93). Sophiology is premised on the idea of divine wisdom. Usually conceptualised in female terms, divine wisdom has links to the concept in Jewish mysticism of the Shekhinah or dwelling place. In a sense, to search for wisdom is
The Lovely Haunting Last year some of Sophia’s poems from Rough Sleepers, the collection written in her last year of life, were submitted to two journals—two very different types of journals, with very different readerships (chosen quite deliberately). Both accepted her poems. As the work has now been published and the journals distributed, Sophia’s poems can also be placed here, on Lexicon. A sequence of three poems, The Torments, has been published in one of