Nigel Gerrans has been writing poetry for almost seventy years but, until his retirement, had never shown the results to anyone except a few close friends. Now, a selection of his thought-provoking and painstakingly-crafted poetry has been made available to a wider audience, who are finding his works as relevant and challenging as the day they were written.
Presented here in a carefully chosen sequence, readers can discover the power and variety of recurrent themes that have enriched Nigel's work since the beginning, with the many moods and forms offering a diverse view of what 'the spiritual' can involve. Tenebrae is a chance for all of us to discover a gifted and previously unknown figure in 20th century poetry.
Tenebrae (‘darkness’) is the name given to the three evening services held before Easter Sunday. The term most probably came into use due to the candles that were extinguished during the singing of the psalms. The choir and congregation would then depart in darkness and silence.
Nigel Gerrans was born in Surrey in 1931. He studied Modern Languages at Cambridge, after which he spent several years teaching in a school for cerebral palsied children. He later worked as a filmmaker for the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries, before taking ordination as a priest and serving as full-time Hospital Chaplain in a busy District General Hospital. He is now retired and lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.