The first event in our bookish days was a talk at Gladstone's Library. Professor Emerita Helen Wilcox was speaking about the poetic inspiration associated with the Holy Spirit. 
I have a lifelong love of devotional poetry, particularly the poets of the late 16th and early 17th Centuries. I also have more than a passing interest in later poets, including Gerald Manley Hopkins, Coventry Patmore and Francis Thompson, so this talk really appealed to me. Long suffering Chris came along, too. Mostly for the wonderful honesty bar, it must be confessed!
Professor Wilcox started her talk by posing the questions: "What are the sources of inspiration for devotional poetry? How do poets balance their dependency on these with the employment of their own artistic skills?" I found these fascinating questions. Classical poets relied on the Muses, nature poets take the natural world as their Muse, and the romantic poet finds inspiration in their beloved. But where does the religious poet find inspiration?
Most of the devotional poets I love are Roman Catholic (although I am not!) and were writing at a time of great religious tensions. They mostly took the Virgin Mary as their Muse; but what about poets of the Church of England? These were the poets on whom Professor Wilcox mostly concentrated.
The lecture explored the creative tensions between divine inspiration and human agency, between faithful assertion and spiritual questioning, in a wide range of devotional poems in English. Works discussed included John Milton's Paradise Lost; Lousie Gluck's Vespers; George Herbert's Jordan and Easter, and Andrew Marvell's The Coronet.
Marvell's The Coronet is an excellent example of poetical inspiration of Helen Wilcox's main thesis In the poem Marvell, well known as a writer of love poems, is moving to writing about devotional verse and being frustrated in this process. He is no longer a mouthpiece, his attempts to offer Christ a crown of flowers - a coronet - are frustrated as he realises that his own pride and self-love are getting in the way of his devotion.
When for the thorns with which I long, too long,
With many a piercing wound,
My Saviour’s head have crowned,
I seek with garlands to redress that wrong:
Through every garden, every mead,
I gather flowers (my fruits are only flowers),
Dismantling all the fragrant towers
That once adorned my shepherdess’s head.
And now when I have summed up all my store,
Thinking (so I myself deceive)
So rich a chaplet thence to weave
As never yet the King of Glory wore:
Alas, I find the serpent old
That, twining in his speckled breast,
About the flowers disguised does fold,
With wreaths of fame and interest.
Ah, foolish man, that wouldst debase with them,
And mortal glory, Heaven’s diadem!
But Thou who only couldst the serpent tame,
Either his slippery knots at once untie;
And disentangle all his winding snare;
Or shatter too with him my curious frame,
And let these wither, so that he may die,
Though set with skill and chosen out with care:
That they, while Thou on both their spoils dost tread,
May crown thy feet, that could not crown thy head.
R S Thomas's poem Kneeling captures the sense of the poet as a mouthpiece waiting for God to speak:
Moments of great calm,
Kneeling before an altar
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God
To speak; the air a staircase
For silence; the sun's light
Ringing me, as though I acted
A great rôle. And the audiences
Still; all that close throng
of spirits waiting, as I,
For the message. Prompt me, God;
But not yet. When I speak,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting
A fascinating lecture which gave me much to think about.