Psalms for the City: Original poetry inspired by the places we call home

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This book is a delight. Keeping quirky and cheerful, it suggests serious things without taking itself too seriously. It could even make the most complacent sceptic laugh and think again.' - Richard Harries (Lord Harries of Pentregarth) I would hate to do that job, and if by making a short video I can help the sales team feel motivated to mention this book – well, I’m delighted. Okay, thank you. Wow, what a lot of happiness comes from saying something really obvious. Maybe I should leave at this point.

Born out of John-Paul’s recovery from a metal breakdown, Psalms for The City is a love-song to our cities, to the relationship between poetry and prayer, and the fact that we are all beings with spiritual health that deserves tending to. It’s for a slot called “A Moment That Changed Me”. Here (below) is the copy I filed. Naturally, the piece as it eventually appears – if it eventually appears!– may be quite different. But I thought you might like to see the words just as I sent them. Blimey, what a reputation to live up to – “a master of improvisation”! That doesn’t allow me any room to fail does it? He was downbeat. Said something about it being “hard to be an artist” – may have used those exact words, or something similar. I’m not sure. It’s a long time ago. But whatever the words he used, I remember the feeling: it felt as if he said: “You, Flintoff, cannot be an artist.” So I urge you to think about being obvious. Just turn to that neighbour again and say something obvious. Relax. Something obvious: whatever.Another reason “being creative” is intimidating is because we live in a society that thinks the people who are creative – the ones who do great things and have great ideas – are sort of “those people over there”. They’re geniuses. I just happened to by browsing near the door that day, when a sales rep from a different publisher came in, carrying a folder full of book covers in plastic sleeves. He propped the folder on a heaped table of books, flipping through at speed, while the shop manager shook his head grimly. Emily, second right, with me, Peanut the schnauzer, the editor of my book, Elizabeth N. and marketing wiz Michael B.

A tougher job than that sounds, to judge by what I once witnessed at the Trafalgar Square branch of Waterstones. The intimate, approachable book provides a collection of day-to-day songs, or psalms, that fit our busy contemporary lives. Always thoughtful, often celebratory, sometimes painful: these rueful verses - and their gorgeous, witty illustrations - build up something both serious and delightful.' - Fiona Sampson, author of Common Prayer and Come Down Best of all, I wrote a book – about finding peace in the places we call home – and I illustrated it too: 50 full-colour drawings, plus the cover – showing the view from my hospital window. Can you imagine how good that feels? I wanted to make art for a living. Forty years passed. And now I do. Open and honest, these are modern day psalms that chart John-Paul’s discovery that the extraordinary places welcomed the ordinary, and that when we’re looking closely, the ordinary places can become extraordinary. Inspired by the psalms – some of the oldest and most soul-stirring poetry in the world – Flintoff’s fluid style and technical skills take us on a private tour of our most-loved urban landscapes and reveal the spiritual nourishment in some of its most famous sights. In countless churches and sacred spaces, he shows us locations to lament; he teaches us to discover joy in crowded marketplaces; and shares how he found hope searching the horizon atop Hampstead Heath.Yeah, that’s how I felt this morning and then into the afternoon, and in fact as I cycled to the tube and then got on the tube, and I wrote some notes, and I went, aaaargh. The editor who commissioned my next book, Elizabeth N., asked if I might record a short video about it, to share at an internal sales meeting. Good ideas come from that sort of experience. When you’re free and relaxed, they come forward like nobody’s business. Absolutely gorgeous...a beautiful, quirky, comforting little book.' - Annalisa Barbieri, columnist, The Guardian and The Observer I like the idea that the grotty area behind some bins on an unremarkable street might be the space where something cosmic is, was and ever shall be taking place”, says John-Paul.