The Backwater Sermons

by Jay Hulme

Jay Hulme is an award-winning transgender poet, performer, educator and speaker. In late 2019, his fascination with old church buildings turned into a life-changing encounter with the God he had never believed in, and he was baptised in the Anglican church.

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.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Religion, Christian, Nonfiction, Christianity

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 2021

About the author

Jay Hulme is an award winning transgender performance poet, speaker and educator.

He teaches, consults, speaks, and works on the importance of diversity in the media, especially transgender inclusion and rights. Jay performs his poetry at engagements in the UK, and has been published in a number of magazines and journals.

Reviews

[Connor Hansford · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a gay man training to be a priest, engaged to a non-binary PhD student specialising in transhumanism and body morphologies, this had my name written all over it. If I could afford it I would buy a copy for every queer person who has ever wondered does God love me and make Jay Hulme deservedly very rich indeed. God bless.

[Katie Gibbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of them were beautiful and some were heartbreaking and some were clever and some made me angry. So no idea really. I did really enjoy it. And it made me want to read more Christian poetry.
Rating: ???

[Valour · Rating 5 out of 5]

I start this review, by saying that I cannot possibly review this book. Because it is so unutterably bloody BRILLIANT. The Backwater Sermons will take you from ecstatic joy to absolute despair. You will swing between hilarious laughter and absolute weeping. This collection will make you think very deeply about what is human, divine, holy, and, all three. There is love, life, death, spirituality and all manner of question here.

The poems in this book will sear themselves into your heart, and leave indelible print on your heart. Jay continues a glorious tradition of intertwining poetry, theology and philosophy and I cannot wait to see what he writes next.

[rie · Rating 4 out of 5]

but the sun is shining
the grass keeps going
and today — today he is alive

[jems :) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favourite book, ever.

[Samuel Luther · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

i really wanted to like this more, but quite a few of the poems just fell flat for me. the subject matters of the poems are definitely moving, and it personally spoke to me a lot. it’s just that the execution wasn’t as impressive as i’d envisioned it to be.

[⋆.˚ livia .☘︎ ݁˖]

if you’re a queer christian or a queer ex-christian this book is for you xx

my favorites:
- take these words
- angels in a time of crisis
- atheist out of necessity
- jesus in a gay bar

[Josie Grooms · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried, I laughed, I cried, then I cried some more

[Ladz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Effective

As a queer who is a lapsed Catholic, I understand the draw to that spirituality and Hulme's faith is evident across each line

[Cara (Wilde Book Garden) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry is so personal that trying to sum up my thoughts in a short review is probably pointless - but I really, really loved this. I really enjoyed the way Hulme explored themes of grief and faith and humanity, and I'm very impressed at how some of his poems use rhyme and repetition that could have felt overly simplistic or sing-song in less skilled hands. Really looking forward to reading more of his work, and the short introduction and background he provided on becoming a "plague Christian" was a great addition to this short book.

I do feel like some parts of this focused a little too much on the loneliness of quarantine? by which I mean that of course that is serious, but the reason for the isolation is such an important one (people are still dying of this disease in huge numbers) that I think the reason for it should have been emphasized in some way. I'm not in any way trying to diminish the reality of this kind of suffering! just thinking it would have been good to have a reference to what is at stake.

CW: Grief, COVID-19, pandemic

[Kris M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn’t do much with the poems that deal with the pandemic because I think I‘ve emotionally closed myself off from most of that time so art about it leaves a very strange aftertaste.
But a lot of the other poems really spoke to me. They feel intricate and beautifully fragile and very hopeful to me.
I love this kind of exploration of faith.

[Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were a few more that didn't quite hit for me in this one, but the ones that did hit, hit so much harder. I was crying on several occasions, but they were such good tears.

Definitely looking forward to whatever he does next.

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some deeply moving poems and some which might work in liturgy. A light touch together with strong commitments to Christianity and social justice create powerful writing.

[rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

first poem in the book:

Isaac

The Lord
does not ask
for that which
is easy

nor takes
that which
is too much
to bear

[Laura Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly beautiful

[janeee :D · Rating 3 out of 5]

queer catholics n christians up 🥹🥹🥹 my favs were :

1. ‘ now you’re christian , do you pray and all that ? ’
2. jesus at the gay bar
3. for a short while

[Lottie from book club · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t enjoying this as much as I thought I would (mainly because thinking about the early pandemic stresses me The Fuck out) but then I got to ‘I never killed a man, but it was close’ and felt like I was being electrocuted. I read it six times in a row. what a fucking poem.

ETA bumped this to 4 stars because I can't stop thinking about some of these poems lol.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love having friends who read because they lend me books that I would have never known about or found otherwise. When I was in NYC in April, my best friend Grace lent this collection of poetry, and I devoured it on the plane. Jay Hulme is a really talented poet, and I love how he was able to tackle so many subjects (being trans/queer, finding religion, and dealing with a world in shutdown due to COVID-19) into a collection that always feels cohesive. I'm a queer person who's fallen away from faith (I grew up in the cult of Catholicism), but reading these poems made me re-consider my own relationship to religion. Hulme is so thoughtful about what a relationship to religion means for a queer person and how they interact with religious spaces like a church. I took photos of so many of these poems as I read simply because I wanted to go back to them later. Also, they work really well as poems about a snapshot in time, too, the world of the shutdown and virtual everything, of disconnect and sadness. If you're looking for some transformative poems, this is the collection for you. Recommended!

[Ellis Billington · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wonderful, quietly impactful collection of Christian poetry, written by an author who converted to Christianity shortly before the pandemic began. In his writing, Hulme examines mortality, holiness, and queerness in creative ways and through varied poetic forms. Some of my favorite aspects of the collection were the ways in which the image of God was shown in everyday people in everyday city life, the way churches were shown as still alive and well even during a time when congregations are not physically meeting in them, and the way the author explored the gender fluidity of God. Sometimes God in these poems was a He, sometimes a She, and sometimes a They.

I didn’t love every single poem, but that’s a tall order and what’s important is that I loved most of the poems in the collection. Some of my favorites, and this really was a hard list to narrow down, were “Don’t Die,” “Vox Pops From Golgotha,” “Jesus at the Gay Bar,” “Multi-Story,” and “Splitting Fares.” Honestly, though, I could list a lot more I loved nearly as much.

[Andrew Dittmar]

I was first introduced with a page of this book that had been placed on Instagram - "Jesus at the Gay Bar." I was so struck that I copied and pasted it into a Word document, printed it out, and framed it.

I was worried to read this. This kind of book can stick with me in uncomfortable ways and, frankly, I can only handle a certain amount of unsettling reading.

But holy crap, I got chills just doing a skim of this.

I'm going to need to actually do a study of the content here.

[Wan Feng An · Rating 4 out of 5]

"People like to write about Icarus,
but we forget that he flew,
for a short while, anyway;

and people like to write about Judas,
but we forget that he walked with God,
for a short while, anyway;"

Not the most common vein of christianity - very queer, accepting and filled with wonder at the tiny and mundane things. Love the picture of faith painted here but felt too saccharine at times, with some implications I didn't like. A concise and good read.

[Pieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply profound collection of poems. While they have no rhyme or meter - something I usually rather dislike in poetry - there is undeniably a strength in them, rich with meaning.

[Logan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 stars

I am not the target audience for this collection. I abandoned my religious affiliations long ago and my relationship with religion and God is blasphemous. At this point in my life, I’m wary and often put-off by Christianity. That said, I think my discomfort with Christianity is something I should work on, and what better way to do that than to see what someone from similar demographics to me has to say about their religion?

The Backwater Sermons explores Jay Hulme’s experiences finding God and religion. I did not anticipate or realize that this collection was written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine. I was fortunate that neither I nor any of my friends experienced death close to us as a direct result of the pandemic. That doesn’t make poems about the pandemic and its associated death any easier to read, however. I would say that I didn’t enjoy around half of the poems in this collection, whether that’s because I didn’t like the writing style (several read like twitter threads to me) or because I felt like the poet was applying religion in ways that made me uncomfortable. There were a lot of generalizations and overstatements that I just didn’t like. It’s also just very difficult for me to comprehend how one can experience such suffering and still turn to God, but that’s a conversation I should have with someone more versed in religious studies than I.

Another thing I struggled with is the language Hulme sometimes used. Several times, the language bordered on what felt like transphobia, though I’m sure I must’ve been misinterpreting that, given Hulme’s gender identity and activism. Either way, felt bad.

Credit where credit is due, Hulme has clearly read the Bible, studied it, and developed his own analysis and philosophy. In looking up some of the allusions he made in his poems, I learned a few things about the Bible and Christianity. I enjoyed the idea of God as inherently flawed, though I don’t know how much that perspective aligns with general Christian doctrine. Hulme’s Christianity is a radical one, and his God uses any pronouns.

Poems that stood out to me:
- Atheist out of Necessity: page 32-33; I don’t know that I necessarily liked this poem, but it certainly stood out to me. There was an element of feeling like the author was pushing religion onto those who do not wish for religion, but I liked the lines “When was God ever normal? / When did God ever make / a rational decision?”
- I never killed a man, but it was close: page 44; a poem about letting the poet’s former self stay dead, “Whatever I find in that grave / will not see the resurrection;” compelling as it could be applied to the author find God, his gender transition, or just the growth of bettering himself over time
- You Eat God?!: page 50; a silly, funny poem about the author’s bewilderment at the Catholic Eucharist
- Like Thomas: page 59; invoking Jesus’s disciple, Thomas, Hulme describes the disbelief and awe that comes with gender-affirming surgeries; “And reborn I touch / my own body for the first time; / incredulous at the miracle”
- Graves like Gardens: page 69; a short, secular poem comparing gardeners and gravediggers
- Splitting Fares: page 81; sharing a taxi with God and feeling her love; this is the kind of religion I like

Favorite poems:
- The Only Shop Still Open: page 12; a poem about a funeral home during the pandemic; there was a level of comfort to this one
- The Edge of a Past Horizon: page 40-41; my favorite poem in the collection I think, if just for the ocean imagery and the following stanza

I was standing by the sea, of course,
drowning my sorrows by the sand.
The land wasn’t made for men like me,
for those made monsters
manipulated into madness,
men told we had this sickness
that maybe the waves could wash clean.

- Vox Pops from Golgatha: page 74; emulating a street interview from the perspective of someone complicit in Jesus’s crucifixion, “And in ten years of crucifying criminals / I only killed God once”

Overall, a poetry collection about the author’s experiences finding God that really didn’t land for me, both because of writing style and themes, but I don’t regret reading it.

[Manolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jay Hulme es un chico trans que sintió la llamada de la vocación religiosa justo al comienzo de la pandemia, cuando fue aceptado en la iglesia incluyendo de St Nicholas de Leicester.

Sería una injusticia decir que esto es una colección de poemas religiosos. Aunque el misticismo y la liturgia forman parte de lo que se encuentra entre estas páginas, la compleja relación entre la teología cristiana y las vidas de la gente queer son, en mi opinión, la base de algunos de los mejores poemas de la colección. Hulme, con su perspectiva única, explota este intrincado asunto teológico y desafía el dogma religioso para mostrar que una identidad de género disidente no es incompatible con la fe. Una bonita colección de poemas escritos por alguien con una perspectiva única y un estilo maravilloso.

Hay una noción que permea el libro, y es la idea de que todo lo que necesitamos está ya ahí, listo para tomarlo, incluso antes de que seamos conscientes de que nos hace falta. También la idea relacionada de que todo permanece, de que lo que hacemos perdura en el tiempo y cuenta una historia. Quizá para el autor esto no sea una idea, sino algo muy real: trabaja en el cementerio de una iglesia de más de un milenio de antigüedad, donde los huesos intentan escapar por las paredes. Un testimonio de un tiempo lejano.

Mis poemas favoritos: Stratus, For a Short While, Christianity for Heathens, Jesus at the Gay Bar, The Carpenter.

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorites (but way too long of a list proportionally, I'm bad at favorites):
*"Isaac," which starts the collection, and I read it and set the book down and walked away for a while because. wow. And then following that up with "Take These Words" ??? just an incredible pair of poems to start. (And then "And Repeat" later, echoing "Take These Words.")
*"For a Short While," rattling around in my head with thoughts about how something good does not have to be forever
*"All of This is Worship" and "Plague Baptism" about pandemic and church very literally and not
*"We Pause at the Red Diamond" because this is a piece of what I adore about liturgy. "You Eat God?!" for similar reasons.
*"This Body" and "The Love of God; The Loss of Church" and "Jay" and "Like Thomas," together and transness and creation and resurrection
*But also "Like Thomas" with "Mary Magdalene and the Gardener" and "The Carpenter" for their interpretation of stories and characters.
*"Reconciliation," because we don't have to rebuild as things were. The scars matter.
*"Before Creation" and "Late Night Theology," wrestling with time and God.

There are so many phrasings and themes that return again and again (edges and fracturing and up and out and time, and, and). And I love so many things here individually, but it works so well as a collection.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of poetry which reflects Jay's journey to, and experience of, Christianity. I'm not Christian, but every poem in this collection spoke to me, and I laughed and wept my way through it. Jay has an innate ability to make you *feel* things as you experience his work (something that is intensified if you ever see him perform in person).

This collection also feature what Jay called his "plague poems", which he wrote during the first global lockdown in 2020. They are incredibly moving, and really capture the feelings and experience that most of us went through at that time.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the collection is extremely queer and full of the joy that comes with that. As a trans and queer person, Jay experiences the world through that lens. He compares the changing and ridiculous nature of cathedrals to the trans experience, he details his understanding of Christianity and Jesus in a way that accepts and loves queer people, and he writes a love poem to the very gay church and community he's found a home in.

This poetry collection is incredible, and shows just how talented a poet Jay is. I recommend it to anybody who enjoys poetry (and to everybody who doesn't too, this collection will make you fall in love with it!).

[Warren Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poem below, by Jay Hulme, popped on my Facebook feed, and when I read, I choked up. This beautiful poem broke my heart and yet, reaffirmed that there is goodness in the world, and that yes, this is just what Jesus would do:

Jesus at the Gay Bar

He's here in the midst of it--
right at the centre of the dance floor,
robes hitched up to Hi Knees
to make it easy to spin.

At some point in the evening,
a boy will touch the hem of His robe
and beg to b healed, beg to be
anything other than this;

And He will reach His arm out,
sweat-damp and weary from dance.
He'll cup the boy's face in His hand
and say,

my beautiful child
there is nothing wrong in this heart of yours
that ever needs to be healed.
--Jay Hulme, The Backwater Sermons (Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2021): 88.

The rest, also beautiful, range in from beatitudes for a queer church, Jesus in other everyday moments, angels, God, creation ... all queer-affirming. Some are heartbreaking.

Recommended.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never devoured a poetry book so fast in my life!

Everything about this was wonderful, although maybe Election Day 2024 was not the *best* day to re-read some incredibly eloquent poetry about ye olde plague days that brought me right back to what it felt like to be isolated for so long. Very good poetry- did its job in terms of evoking emotion, but ... too soon (for me at least lol).

I don't actually want to read the plague poems again for a while because, again, it did much too good a job at recalling what everything felt like back then, but A Very British Pandemic in particular is chilling. What really shone in my opinion were the poems about faith! I especially adored Take These Words, Christianity for Heathens, Cathedralsong, Before Creation, and Late Night Theology.

I can't wait to reread the faith poems again in a few weeks. These are the types of poems where I feel like I won't fully grasp the intricacy of their meanings until I've read them through a few times and let the poems settle and live into my own experience for a bit.

I also immediately ordered Jay's other Christian poetry book, The Vanishing Song, because I loved this one so much.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

these were ok. I prefer more lyricism in poetry and this did not work for me, overall. The themes should have resonated more with me but I found myself impatient to finish because of the plain tone.

Here's one I liked from among this set:

For a Short While:
People like to write about Icarus, but
we forget that he flew, for a short
while, anyway; / and people like to
write about Judas, but we forget that
he walked with God, for a short while,
anyway; / and people like to write
about death, but forget that we live,
for a short while, anyway; / and
perhaps such things are worth it, are
worth throwing it all away; / oh, what
I'd give to touch such dreams, for a
short while, anyway

[Emma Goldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written poems, full of meaning and careful thought. Very readable and understandable. It follows his path to faith, with both the healing and the hurting experiences. The two poems on Coventry Cathedral, the old bombed building and the new one built on its ashes, particularly resonated with me, as did the reality of the memorial chapel with its nailed together cross when I went there as a child. I felt his own joy when he found a radical inclusive church to welcome him. I wish all churches would be so open to love.