Seven Whole Days. Ayodeji Malcolm Guite

      author acknowledgements

      I am very grateful to Faye Hall for responding to my suggestion that she might interpret my poetry sequence “Seven Whole Days” through her art. She has created a beautiful new work in response to mine that not only interprets and illustrates what I have written but stands up as a sequence in its own right. I hope this collaboration will invite readers and gazers to rekindle their delight in God’s good creation and to glimpse a little of how His glory shines through it all. I am grateful to my publisher Canterbury Press for granting us permission to reproduce the text of this poem as it first appeared in my book Parable and Paradox.

      Malcolm Guite

      Thank you to Malcolm Guite—without whose listening ear to his Creator, this book would not exist. To Steve Bell and Amy Knight, models for some of the paintings, and for Steve’s encouragement and mentorship. To my dear husband, Darrell, for his constant and loving support. To Waldy Derksen for his sponsorship, Dave Swiecicki for art photography, and Roberta Landreth for book design.

      Above all, thanks to our Creator:

      For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

      Faye Hall

      Foreword

      As a songwriter, having worked with the poetry of Malcolm Guite, I know something of having my own artistry deepened by another’s. It’s a wonder, really, to find yourself delving into regions you’d never have come to on your own, and yet the work is still yours. Alternatively, as someone whose artistry has inspired paintings by Faye Hall, I also know something of what it’s like to have one’s work taken up by another and transmuted into an entirely different form. I’ve literally “seen” my songs as paintings: colour and shape and motion and contrast and texture and … well … mystery. It is enough to leave one still and silent in awe.