Review
Books
Culture
Joy
Poetry
5 min read

Theresa Lola's poetical hope

The death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A poet stands and speaks, raising an arm.
Theresa Lola performs at Kings Place.
Cosmic Shambles Network.

There are poems such as T.S. Eliot's ‘Journey of the Magi’ and U.A. Fanthorpe's ‘BC – AD’ which have become staples of Christmas Carol services. Last Christmas, for the first time, I used Theresa Lola's ‘Look at the Revival’ as the poem in our Carol Service that explored the experience of the Magi in seeking and finding Jesus.   

‘Look at the Revival’ was commissioned by National Gallery in 2020 in response to ‘The Adoration of Kings’ painting by Jan Gossaert. The poem is written in the voice of Balthazar, the Black King in the painting, and explores the painting’s themes of rupture, transformation and renewal. It ends with this reflection: 

My job often feels like a hefty stone 

But today I am powered by a fierce awe. 

  

I say to the stunned people let us look deeply 

to know this hope deeply. 

British Nigerian poet and former Young People’s Laureate for London, Lola is the British equivalent of Amanda Gorman, whose poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ made such an impact at US President Joe Biden's inauguration. Lola said after that event that “To have poetry make national headlines … was just so exciting” and to have Gorman’s poem articulate everyone’s feelings “was just the perfect example of what poetry can do”. 

There is a real art to writing poetry for public occasions where depth and immediacy need to intertwine. It is an art that Lola herself has mastered, as was demonstrated when she was commissioned by the Mayor of London’s Office to write and read a poem - ‘For Those Who Listen When Courage Calls’ - at the unveiling of Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square. 

Lola was joint-winner in 2018 of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and was featured in the 2019 ‘Forces for Change’ issue of British Vogue as a next generation talent. Other commissions for her work, which explores themes of self-discovery, transformation, cultural heritage, and belonging, have included Selfridges, Rimowa, Royal Festival Hall, and Audible. She is currently leading the Volunteer Interpreter Programme at Dulwich Picture Gallery where, in a programme inspired by their Soulscapes exhibition, she is exploring how poetry can be used to interpret their collection.  

“This poet speaks boldly of prayer as a call to arms for family, for love, for a survival, which as she concludes in the final poem, ‘Psalm 151’, ‘I prayed my fists into’”

S. Niroshini

Her debut poetry collection ‘In Search of Equilibrium’, which was hailed as “powerful and rigorous”, is an extraordinary, and exacting study of death and grieving. The reviews of this collection have much to say about the well springs of her work.  

In this collection, as S. Niroshini writes, she “deftly deploys form, texture, and shape to interrogate the meaning of death and the suffering of family” with poems “variously presented as computer coding, live reportage, prayers, algorithms, Wikipedia entries and hip-hop lyrics”. While its subject matter is, as Carmina Masoliver notes, “essentially natural – life and death”, the poems themselves are often experimental and “bring in cultural elements … as well as religious allusions”. Charlie Hill explains that “This superb debut collection revolves around the death of the poet’s grandfather, whose Alzheimer’s resulted in a ‘four-year funeral’”. Laurie Smith suggests “It is rare for a debut collection by a young poet to be so death-haunted, but it is death-haunted in the same sense as [Sylvia] Plath’s ‘Ariel’ and [Anne] Sexton’s ‘To Bedlam and Part Way Back’.” He writes that “The comparison isn’t fanciful” as “Lola’s writing has a similar vividness and strength”. 

Masoliver notes that “The collection is book-ended with Lola’s own prayer and psalm”. “From the first,” she suggests, “there is an expression of doubt about the poet’s faith, though holding onto it ‘even when I fear God might be a thin shadow’”. Yet, “By the time we get to the final poem, there is a loss of innocence to the reality of the world around us, but a certain strength that comes with ‘fighting darkness’”. Niroshini states that “This poet speaks boldly of prayer as a call to arms for family, for love, for a survival, which as she concludes in the final poem, ‘Psalm 151’, ‘I prayed my fists into’”. 

Lola has said that “The writing of the collection was emotionally challenging as the poems touch on sensitive topics about death, faith, family and mental health.” For her, “writing poetry has been a ‘therapeutic tool’, a ‘healthy listening ear’ and a way to express her struggles, be they anxiety or … grief”. Nevertheless, she also says: “My poems always suggest and show hope no matter how gritty the subject is! I do write poems that are centred around my faith, and that hope in my faith is Jesus”. 

Many reviewers note Lola’s ability to write lines, such as ‘sweeping me off my bones’, “that stop you dead”. Hannah Williams was particularly moved by lines from ‘Blessed Are the Mothers of a Dead Child’: 

Blessed are the mothers of a dead child 

for they manage to recover 

after eating the fruit that grows 

from planting your child’s casket in the ground. 

Hill cites the final lines of the same poem: 

My grandmother tries to celebrate the brief beauty of his breath. 

She says what use is sweeping grief under the carpet 

when you can blend it to find the drop of sanity that will flow from it. 

to suggest that it is here that the equilibrium sought in the collection’s title is to be found. 

The Sunday Times Style Magazine has described Lola as being among “the ranks of an exciting new wave of young female bards who are widening the appeal of poetry for a new generation”. As a result, the imminent prospect of a second collection from her is a particularly exciting prospect. Look out later in the year, then, for ‘Ceremony for the Nameless’ which is described as exploring the act of naming and its role in shaping our identities, our aspirations, what we carry and how we belong. In lyrical, joyful and moving poems, Lola will explore the ways our journey through life might require us to cast off old expectations – both others’ and our own – just as at other times it can bring us back, strangely and unexpectedly, to where we first began.  

This returns us to Balthazar and his journey of discovery. So, as he states: “let us look deeply / to know this hope deeply.”  

Article
Belief
Community
Culture
Music
1 min read

Oasis: it's all gone a bit biblical at this summer’s musical moments

We’re reaching for some ancient vocab to describe our experiences together

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A silhouette of a musician holding up shakers.
'Cast no shadow'.
x.com/oasis

A biblical narrative keeps whirring around my mind.  

In the first century, Paul – planter of churches, writer of letters, spreader of the way of Jesus – finds himself in Athens, the Graeco-Roman city where meaning is made. He wanders around this city, soaking up its culture, noticing its priorities, watching its habits. But he doesn’t do so silently. Paul pulls out his usual party trick; yelling about Jesus here, there, and pretty much everywhere, eventually catching the attention of the local philosophers. They want to hear more, and Paul finds himself thrown in front of the Areopagus, the meaning-making council at the heart of the meaning-making city. The cultural epicentre of the Graeco-Roman world, one could argue.  

Never one to miss an opportunity, Paul gets to his feet and unleashes a monologue for the ages, kicking off with this line: ‘People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious…’ 

Quite the opener, isn’t it? 

It’s that opening line that my imagination seems to have gotten snagged on.  

There is so much going on around me – right here and right now, in 2025 - that makes me want to find a place into which I can scream the exact same thing. There and then, here and now, I can see that in every way we are very bloomin’ religious.  

What Paul and I don’t mean by such an assertion is that everyone our contexts are signed up – hook, line, and sinker - to an organised religion. Such an assertion would be silly, considering the data tells a different story. What I’m pretty sure Paul meant, and what I know I mean is this – in every kind of way, people are searching for that which is bigger, deeper, truer than ourselves. We are directing our attention, our energy, our worship in certain directions. We are seeking ritual and practice, wrapping ourselves in stories that give meaning to our day-in-day-out experiences, stories that tie our lived reality into something that transcends it. We’re grasping for a world that is more full of beauty, truth, and sense than we imagined; pledging allegiance to our inkling that there is something more. Yup. In every way, we, the good old human race, are very religious.  

Paul said it with his chest then, I think he’d say it with his chest now. 

There are a hundred different places that I could go in order to pluck some ripe evidence for my theory – but for now, my evidence of choice is the language being used to describe the long-awaited Oasis reunion.  

‘Biblical’ 

That’s the word being used – in national headlines and personal Instagram captions alike, ‘biblical’ is the adjective of choice.  

Isn’t that strange?  

I don’t really know what people mean by it, to be honest. According to my research, they’re taking their cue from Liam Gallagher himself, who was the first to describe the band as such. Stay humble, Liam.   

Is using ‘biblical’ as the descriptor of choice a reference to the reconciliation of warring brothers? That’s certainly a biblical motif, which I guess is being played out in real-time, witnessed by those who could afford the £400 ticket (no, I’m not bitter). Is it implying that this event is so monumental, it should be canonised somehow? Written about? Memorialised? Poured over for millennia to come? Or is it a reference to the fact that what we are witnessing is the fulfilment of rumours, prophecies, hopes and expectations?  

Maybe it’s all of the above, maybe it’s none of the above. It doesn’t really matter. What matters, at least to me, is that people are wanting to express that these gigs are more than the sum of their parts; there’s something transcendent about them, something awe-inspiring, wonder-infusing. Something that feels, dare I say it, religious about them.  

It gets even more interesting, because such sentiments aren’t reserved for the reunification of the Mancunian brothers.  

I’m still stunned, curious to the point of distraction, about the fact that we – in a secular, materialist, rational culture – cannot help but stretch toward spiritual language. 

In a podcast episode recorded in the days leading up to this year’s Glastonbury festival, the DJ and broadcaster, Annie Mac, described the event as ‘communion’, explaining that ‘when you don’t go to church, you need to get that somewhere.’ On the flip side, in the days following the festival, another DJ and broadcaster, Miquita Oliver, teased the endless Glastonbury posts that were filling up her social media feeds – she jokingly stated that ‘it all gets a little churchy after Glastonbury… like “it’s heaven on earth”… can we all relax?’  

So, here we have it again – people reaching for religious language to describe significant musical events. Be it the Oasis reunion or Glastonbury – I’m fascinated by the fact that we’re not content with stating that these gigs are merely talented people doing what they do well, and in so doing, giving us an enjoyable time. Such language may be factually accurate, but it doesn’t feel true enough to us. Rather, we’re grappling with the feeling that these events feel like something we were made to experience somehow, they they’re tapping into the deepest parts of us, perhaps?  

In the past, I’ve wondered whether this is down to the sense of profound togetherness that these events provide – how they have the ability to remind us that we’re bound to each other, only if for a night. They’re a direct afront to individualism, the biggest and sturdiest lie of our age. I’ve also reflected on the fact that they instil as sense of awe within us: raw awe. An elusive emotion that can be hard to come by, but that we were made to feel. I still think all of that comes into play. 

I’ve pondered this a thousand times and yet I’m still stunned, curious to the point of distraction, about the fact that we – in a secular, materialist, rational culture – cannot help but stretch toward spiritual language. Nothing else quite hits the spot; nothing else feels quite deep enough, big enough, true enough. Religious references and language, we’re determined to keep them in our repertoire, aren’t we? Our reliance upon them betrays us. Indeed, I’ve come to see our unceasing usage of them as a crack in the façade of disenchantment. 

Oh, people of 2025 and beyond, I can see that in every way you are very religious.  

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