Jay Hulme
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jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Jay Hulme
@jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
20K followers 650 following 2.6K posts
Poet. Speaker. Educator. Performer. Adult, YA, and Children's poetry. Occasionally picture books. Lots of posts about churches. Unapologetically trans (he/him) jayhulme.com
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jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
A living church. A thriving church. A church with no functional noticeboard but a lot of space on the railings.
The railings outside St nicks in Leicester, with ten different posters tied to them. There's the November and December schedule showing all the events and services, as well as posters for evenings with the cathedral choir at St Nicholas, a Taize service on Tdor, a special eucharist the Sunday after Tdor, a candlelight carol service, church Christmas decorating, a Christmas craft afternoon, beer & carols with Kate Bottley, and a Christmas eve eucharist
November 7, 2025 at 10:04 AM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Cathedral friend.
A magpie perched high on a cathedral column
November 6, 2025 at 7:24 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Wanna see the newspaper clipping about it?
SHOCKING DEATH OF A WELL-KNOWN ARCHITECT. Mr Ordish, of Queensborough Hall, Leicester-shire, met a terrible death late on Tuesday night. Deceased attended the presidential address of the Sanitary Institute at Leicester, and on returning by the train he got out at Syston Station before the train stopped, and, falling between the carriages, his head got under the wheels, causing instantaneous death. Deceased was an authority on church architecture.
November 5, 2025 at 3:05 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Join me on BBC Radio Three at 9:45pm this Tuesday, as I take you on a journey to the cave of St Robert of Knaresborough, to explore if a place of faith such as this can ever, truly, be abandoned.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
The interior of St Roberts Cave, with rough hewn greening limestone walls and a mud floor Nobody lives here, few people visit, fewer pray, but this site is still holy. The moths clinging to the roof of the cave, don't know it's abandoned, the spiders pray their own prayers in their scuttling tongue. God cannot abandon a place, as much as we cannot abandon ourselves. What is created cannot be uncreated. What is carved from the cliff cannot be put back. This cave became a hermitage, the hermitage became a chapel, the chapel becamea shrine, the shrine became a ruin, the ruin became a crimescene, the crimescene became a tourist attraction, the tourist attraction became forgotten, and still the cave opens onto the river, the trees turn green and gold and drop their leaves, and the leaves become mud and layer onto the stone, and fill in the open grave, and carpet the cave floor, and feed the trees, that continue the cycle they began long before Robert arrived. There is something here, in this cave, that opens outwards. A span wider than the cave walls and the space between the water and the cliff. We walk here in the footsteps of the past and the future, witnessing the promise of all we could be. Medieval Theologians spoke of the possibility that it was in the nothingness that we could discover the infinite, that it was our preoccupation with all that there is, that got in the way of all we could be. Robert shed the world like a cloak, and created, in this sliver of land, something else. Every time I come I try to step closer to that something. To the truths that he found here in this fragment of space. I sit in the dark of the cave and hope that I see it, that I glimpse the wonder he saw, placed just an inch out of reach. Jay kneels before st Roberts gave, scattered around him are the low walls the the ruined chapel, and behind him the mouth of the cave opens up in the ivy-covered cliff
November 3, 2025 at 1:30 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Someone visiting St Nicks: "hmmm, I wonder how old this church is..."

Me, a small and gnomelike creature that lives in the walls, appearing silently and from nowhere to say: "let me tell you the secrets of this ancient and sacred place."
Jay sits cross legged on the floor by the altar and pulpit steps, gesturing as he speaks. Someone sits in the pew in front of him listening (hopefully)
November 2, 2025 at 8:01 AM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Oh no, some say he's talking about Cathedrals again...
A photo of jay holding a microphone and gesturing at a PowerPoint slide that just says "Cathedrals"
October 31, 2025 at 1:03 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Me: I love my best friend, I'd die for my best friend.

The most recent photos of me and my best friend:
Okay so this is like a lovely formal family photo except the parents are at the back looking happy in their best outfits and jay and kym are at the front, and kym is putting jay in a weird headlock Another lovely formal family photo with two beautiful parents at the back smiling all happily only jay and kym are at the front and jay is poking kym who is screaming and slapping him in the face.
October 29, 2025 at 9:51 AM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Had the rare joy of preaching this Sunday, looking at Prayer. Here's a little bit of what I said...
Perhaps we begin by praying at meals. Before bed. In the mornings. When an ambulance goes by. Perhaps we make an effort to thank God for a beautiful flower, or a kind word, or the presence of a friend, or stranger. And perhaps that prayer will grant us more strength of faith, or a clearer sense of God's call on our lives. Perhaps it helps us see God more clearly, and more often, recognising consciously what has always been there. Perhaps we find, in this newfound sense of God's presence, the strength to do and be what we could not before. Prayer is not always about asking, but about being in the presence of God, and about allowing yourself to be changed by that encounter. "More and more by each glistening minute", as Jorie Graham would put it. Prayer is openness, and vulnerability, and longing. For me, prayer is reaching towards the vastness that is God, and, more and more often, being able to recognise God reaching back. As God always has, since long long before I believed. In the famous painting of God creating Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, God is leaning forward, almost falling off his cloud, every muscle straining as he reaches, reaches, reaches. Well past the middle of the panel, hand outstretched. And Adam sits on the rocks, reclining, hand raised upwards, lazily curling a finger. AIl he has to do, is straighten his hand, stretch out his arm, lean forward an inch, one inch, and he can seize God by the hand, by the wrist. If he reached out to the same extent as God, they could press their foreheads together, face to face. Prayer is extending that finger. Stretching out that arm. Working to cross that gulf which we have created, with our petty preoccupations. With our desire to be, like the Pharisee, SEEN to be pure. But, as we know, "nothing may separate us from the love of God". All we have to do is reach out, just the tiniest amount, and there God is. Waiting. Patiently. For us.
October 28, 2025 at 2:21 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Little Holy Island retreat. Hiked for hours in the dunes. Prayed in the ruins. On the outcrops. By the sea.

Watched the sunset. Waited for the stars to open up. Saw the milky way. Saw a comet fall from the sky. Split into two. Burn up over the land. Red and white coals in the darkness.
A tree alone in the sand dunes A castle behind ruins and gravestones painted red by the sunset A rainbow rises out of the ruined abbey A sunset over the sea.
October 24, 2025 at 7:43 AM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Saw him in a shop months ago and didn't buy him... But I can't stop thinking about him.
A little snail statue, it's weirdly cute with a smile and really chubby cheeks Little statue of a snail
October 15, 2025 at 2:15 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Literally JUST mint flavoured sugar.
Ingredients Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Fondant (sugar, glucose syrup, water) Oil of peppermint, Electrolytes (potassium chloride, calcium lactate, sodium chloride, magnesium carbonate), B Vitamin Blend (Nicotinamide [B3], Calcium Pantothenate [B5], Pyridoxine Hydrochloride [B6], Methylcobalamin [B12]) Gluten Free, Vegan.
October 12, 2025 at 9:10 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Did some colouring in and could only find the Sharpies I'd bought for a workshop I'd run a few weeks ago, and... I've never coloured in with a pen that doesn't go all weird and Streaky? What is this? Uniform? Colour? Is it? Magic?
A coloured in floral pattern. The colours are uniform and not streaky
October 12, 2025 at 8:56 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
My friends are like "I can't connect with/find time for my faith right now, do you have any advice?" and I'm like "make a space for prayer/meditation in your home. Don't care if it's a room or a corner or just part of a shelf. Put physical space aside for it, and the mental space you need will come.
A prayer corner under an eaves roof, there's a flock of paper doves on the back wall, in front is a table with two books, an icon, and two lot candles on it. Hanging over the wall is a wooden cross. There's a kneeler below.
October 11, 2025 at 12:18 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Perhaps it's because I'm in a city centre church where we've literally had people graffiti theological questions on our notice boards in pencil and felt tip pen, or perhaps it's just that colliding the worlds inside and outside of ancient churches is my ~thing~, but I do legitimately love this.
A chapel in Canterbury cathedral. Graffiti style graphics with theological questions are on the walls and columns
October 10, 2025 at 8:27 AM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
People online are losing their absolute minds at this art installation at Canterbury Cathedral and all the ridiculous reasons they're giving as to why it's bad kind of prove the point of why it's good, actually.
A photo of steps at Canterbury cathedral, on the wall a graffiti-style graphic in red and black reads "god, what happens when we die?"
October 10, 2025 at 8:24 AM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Chilli sides, daal, deliciousness.
Pico de gallo and guacamole in plastic tubs Daal topped with green beans and cumin seeds
October 2, 2025 at 12:53 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
I have little paper bunting of bats and ghosts up in my house and when this time of year rolls around people are like "oh are these your Halloween decorations?" Like nah babes, these are my year-round decorations. Don't let your desire for spooky whimsy be restricted by the time of year.
A garland of paper bats hung up in a nook below a shelf over the TV. A garland of paper ghosts hung up on a bookshelf.
October 1, 2025 at 10:32 AM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
"Prostrate before God a final time
I reach out my arms to the earth.
This stone blooms with the millennia,
this soil burrows with chitinous song;
life bursts from the death of another —
each earthly thing I've loved is fossil-rich,
renewed, re-created, recycled, returned."
A Saint Dies Beside the Nidd By Jay Hulme - from 'The Vanishing Song' Prostrate before God a final time I reach out my arms to the earth. This stone blooms with the millennia, this soil burrows with chitinous song; life bursts from the death of another — each earthly thing I've loved is fossil-rich, renewed, re-created, recycled, returned. Soon, I cannot consider the miracle, only this moment, so wholly my own. The breeze in the trees reminds me of the song of my mother’s womb; though I’ll only realise that later — after I’ve gone.
September 24, 2025 at 2:59 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
"After he retired to the cave
prayer grew in him like a forest,
sowed its seeds inside his psyche,
rewilded his heart. He didn’t
see that centuries had passed
without him."
A Saint looks up from his prayers to discover he’s been dead for some time For St Robert of Knaresborough By Jay Hulme - from 'The Vanishing Song' After he retired to the cave prayer grew in him like a forest, sowed its seeds inside his psyche, rewilded his heart. He didn’t see that centuries had passed without him. One day he looked up, hearing requests for intercession, and the woods were older than expected, the riverbanks shifted by the years — and as he knelt before the altar in his hermit's church, his knees disappeared below the edges of his emptied grave.
September 24, 2025 at 2:57 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
"How to steal a Saint"
Fountains Abbey Vs Knaresborough Town - 1218 By Jay Hulme - from ‘The Vanishing Song’ How to steal a Saint You will need: a large Abbey (to store them in) a selection of monastic brothers (the keener the better) large sticks (just in case) How to keep your Saint You will need: a strong sense of loving connection (to brave the danger) a few dozen angry locals (to face the monks) some swords (to counter the sticks) How to report the outcome You will need: a good idea of what happened (do your research) a coherent write-up (do not write a poem) a clear result (Knaresborough won)
September 24, 2025 at 2:56 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
"Every single one of us, carving
a home through the dark."
The Hermit Studies Astronomy By Jay Hulme from The Vanishing Song Wild man of the cave, the locals tell stories about you. Left alone in the darkness you have been scratching a home out of stone. When the stars open up far above, do you track where we're going? Every single one of us, carving a home through the dark.
September 24, 2025 at 2:55 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
"Robert went mad in the way of saints;
beautiful and holy and wild as anything.
He grew into the cave, hands scratching
at the earth; for weeks he watched the river."
The Madness of St Robert of Knaresborough By Jay Hulme - from The Vanishing Song' Robert went mad in the way of saints; beautiful and holy and wild as anything. He grew into the cave, hands scratching at the earth; for weeks he watched the river. When knights and kings came with riches he told them things they never wanted to hear. Centuries later he still speaks to strangers, pilgrims to a past they cannot comprehend. If they listen, Robert offers them madness in whichever form they choose. One man chose murder. Buried the body in the cave. A sacrifice, perhaps. An atrocity instead of a prayer. More choose to go mad like him. A consecrated insanity. A heart crawling among the trees, fingers splayed across the stone, grafting themselves into the rock. They call out to God in rushing words - they sound like the echoing water, as it carves away at the cliff.
September 24, 2025 at 2:54 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Today is the feast day of St Robert of Knaresborough, who died today (September 24th) in 1218.

He's my favourite saint, and I visit the cave where he lived whenever I can.

Here's a thread of some poems I wrote about / for him.
Jay kneels at the grave of St Robert, he's surrounded by greenery
September 24, 2025 at 2:51 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
My wheelie bin has been going missing. It disappears for weeks at a time. I know one of my neighbours is stealing it.

Today I found it... And my neighbour has badly painted out my address and added their own house number... WHILE LEAVING MY FLAT NUMBER UNREDACTED, SO ITS OBVIOUSLY MY STOLEN BIN???
A wheelie bin. There's a huge smear of white paint at the top and then the number 28 written with the same thick white paint. Beside and underneath the new number are the words 'road' and 'flat [redacted]'
September 23, 2025 at 6:34 PM
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
GO THROUGH THE TUNNELS IN THE CATHEDRAL WALLS! ITS SAFE AND FUN! I PROMISE! DO IT AT NIGHT! SAFE AND FUN! SAFE AND FUN! DO IT AT NIGHT! SAFE AND FUN IN THE SECRET WALL TUNNELS! SAFE AND FUN!
The triforium level
September 22, 2025 at 9:19 AM