Published: 2021

Publisher: Canterbury Press

In this new poetry collection, Jay details his journey through faith and baptism during an unprecedented world-wide pandemic. As he finds God in the ruined factories and polluted canals of his home city, Jonah is heckled over etymology, angels appear in tube stations, and Jesus sits atop a multi-story car park. Cathedrals are trans, trans people are cathedrals, and amidst it all God reaches out to meet us exactly where we are.

Jay’s poetry explores belief in the modern world and offers a perspective on queer faith that will appeal not only to Christians, but young members of the LGBT+ community who are interested in faith but unsure of where to start.

Featuring the viral poem “Jesus at the Gay Bar”

“Jay's work not only gives voice and movement to his own story but also, and crucially, to our collective experience. And the truth held in Jay's words will speak beyond chronology of events and continue to annotate the future.” - Revd Kate Bottley, broadcaster

“As the pandemic filled the world, Jay found life everywhere, in God. He celebrates life and he lives in the mystery of things. These will be the gifts of this book to you.” - Bishop Paul Bayes

“Jay's poems, grown from particular soil knitting together faith, identity, vulnerability, strength and hope, have power to help repair our own and every fragmented life.” - Very Revd David Monteith, Dean of Leicester

“These poems are a gift, especially for those for whom faith seems weird or impossible. Wry, searching and occasionally outrageous, The Backwater Sermons reveals a fresh Christian voice for our time." - Canon Rachel Mann, poet and theologian

Books ship separately from other items and may arrive later.