Richard Church (poet)

Richard Thomas Church (26 March 1893 – 4 March 1972) was an English writer, known as poet and critic; he also wrote novels and verse plays, and three well-received volumes of autobiography.

He was born in London, and went to school in Dulwich. He worked as a civil servant, leaving in 1933 to write full-time; he became a journalist and reviewer. His first poetry appeared in Robert Blatchford's Clarion, and he contributed verse to periodicals for the rest of his life.

His first post as a literary editor was with the New Leader, organ of the Independent Labour Party. He was director of the Oxford Festival of Spoken Poetry during the 1930s. His much-anthologised World War I poem 'Mud' first appeared in Life and Letters, January 1935.

The first volume of Church's autobiography, Over the Bridge (1955), was awarded the Sunday Times Prize for Literature; the novelist Howard Spring described it as "the loveliest autobiography written in our time," pointing out that the writer had "found life full of enchantment, and how not the least of its enchantments was its challenge." The second volume, The Golden Sovereign, appeared in 1957. That year Church was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

While young, Church had a mystical experience at a convalescent home, which he recounted in his autobiography, 'Over the Bridge', and which was also recounted by the British occultist writer Colin Wilson. Looking out of some French windows, Church saw a gardener chopping down a dead tree. What struck Church after a while was that the sight of the axe hitting the tree and the sound of the axe hitting the tree were not synchronised. The sound was delayed. At first he did not believe his own powers of perception, but after concentrating his vision and hearing, he came to the conclusion that he was experiencing an error in the laws of physics. He came to the conclusion - which would remain with him for the rest of his life - that "time and space are not absolute. Their power was not law." He experienced an incredible freedom in this epiphany. "(...) I was free. Since time and space were deceivers, openly contradicting each other, and at best offering a compromise in place of law" After this epiphany another soon followed. From where he stood he sensed that "(...) my limbs and trunk were lighter than they seemed, and that I had only to reduce them by an act of will, perhaps by a mere change of physical mechanics, to command them off the ground, out of the tyranny of gravitation". He then left the ground and glided 'about the room' some twelve or eighteen inches above the floor. He returned to the ground only to take off once more.

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