READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

  A reflection on the earliest modern English versions of Psalm 23, found in the pewsheet for the fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd),  St. Peter’s Eastern Hill, the 26 th of April, 2026   “The Lord is my shepherd; I can want nothing.” This year is the 500 th anniversary of   William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, published only a decade before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. Some of his versions of Books of the Old Testament have survived, though he was put to death before completion of that task.   “He feedeth me in a green pasture, and leadeth me to a fresh water.” We glimpse Tyndale in the unsigned Matthew Bible (1537), brought out a year after his execution in the Netherlands. Fellow Protestant translator Miles Coverdale included all available Tyndale translations and was himself a collaborator with Tyndale on the Pentateuch. Some of those translations were still in manuscript.   “He quickeneth my soul, and bringeth...

  Re-reading In my craft or sullen art the personal declaration doesn’t sound like a revolution, or even just a reason for writing words, perhaps because of sullen, a word meaning resentment, moody, bad-tempered, morose, uncommunicative, a word that sets the tone. And though uncommunicative, the art or craft is not still or too moody but Exercised in the still night, a time When only the moon rages , giving credence to the claim that he is exercised though everything else, bar the moon, is still. Except, either in his mind or to acknowledge their certain presence And the lovers lie abed , as night will have it, though unexpectedly not with ardour or passion or mutuality but With all their griefs in their arms . The words, having set out their condition, then turn to a series of opposing purposes for writing words: I labour by singing light. Does he even sing for his supper? Apparently Not for ambition or bread , even if he’s doing a good job of keeping our attention while staying ...

  Anton Chekhov: 16 June 1904 Gregorian Calendar 29 June I just cannot get used to German silence and calm. One day is like any other day in Badenweiler.   There’s not a sign of good taste or talent anywhere. At 7 in the morning a band plays in the garden: they’re awful. But there’s loads of order and formality and honesty. Names: Doktor Formula, Frau und Fraulein Bassoon, Herr Lipp. My health has improved, not so much out of breath. Never submit a manuscript to two publishers at once. They might both publish at once, ignoring your protests. Out walking I don’t notice I’m ill, no aches and pains. My legs are thinner than ever they’ve been. Anyway, my play would seem to have been received well. At 7.30 a German visits, a kind of masseur. Herr Spa rubs me over with water, then I rest a while. Idea for a novella: all one man’s thoughts over course of one day. His thoughts about their thoughts and so on and so forth. At 8 I drink some acorn cocoa....

  An anti-ode entitled ‘Fire’ opens with a line from a letter of Anton Chekhov written to Dmitri Grigorovich, March 28, 1886, Moscow, and published in the Picador edition of selected letters in 1984. The whole poem is about Chekhov, reading him in Melbourne during the January bushfires.   FIRE   “I have composed my stories as reporters write their accounts of fires – mechanically, half-consciously,   “with no concern either for the reader or myself,” fire being the given, the sudden cause of all decisions   the story tells as people run one way snatching belongings or would stay put and fight heat they cannot beat.   Leave now, it is too late to leave, abandon your plans is the language of fire coming over the hill towards us.   Staying doesn’t make you a hero. Fire came from nowhere. We’ve lost everything. The whole place has just gone.   Fire quietens the township’s dreams of a world trip. Fire has leapt the r...