The Inklings, everyday creativity and 75 years of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Highlights from John Hendrix's 'The Mythmakers', hear me on BBC Radio Wales talking C. S. Lewis this Sunday, and upcoming poetry appearances
‘The remarkable fellowship of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien’ gets a wonderfully creative retelling in John Hendrix’s part-biography part-graphic novel The Mythmakers. As a long-standing Inklings nerd, the story and ideas weren’t new to me, but I delighted in the vivid way Hendrix brings it to life, with a wizard and talking lion wandering through their lives and thought (including ‘magic doors’ leading to appendices at the back of the book).
Creative community
A popular image of creativity is that of the ‘lone genius’, but the story of Tolkien and Lewis’s friendship shows the importance of community to creativity. Not to put too fine a point on it, without Lewis’s encouragement, Tolkien would probably never have finished or published The Lord of the Rings, and without his friendship with Tolkien, Lewis would probably never have written either his Chronicles of Narnia or his science-fiction novels.
I don’t know about you, but I find that I think better through conversation – there’s something about talking things out with other people that makes thinking easier and deeper. Other people’s insights jolt me out of the ruts of my own thinking, and often help generate new insights that perhaps neither of us would have come up with by ourselves. (I recently came across a fascinating paper on why we (or most of us) find conversation easy, when it might seem that monologuing would be ‘simpler’, by the way).
I can’t help but feel a little jealous of Lewis and Tolkien’s community in the Inklings, the group that met weekly to talk literature, theology and to discuss one another’s writing. I have creative friends and good conversation partners, but nothing to match the quality and regularity of the Inklings. Something to work on cultivating perhaps!
Great stories are written on a normal Tuesday afternoon
Another thing I appreciated was the way Hendrix emphasised the ordinariness of the Inklings’ creative process, highlighting the way in which the writing of The Lord of the Rings took place within the rhythms of ordinary life.
Some of my favorite passages of Tolkien's letters are to his son Christopher during the war. They read like a diary charting his daily progress on The Two Towers.
Friday, April 14, 1944:
“I managed to get an hour or two writing & have brought Frodo nearly to the gates of Mordor. Afternoon lawn-mowing.”
Tuesday, April 18, 1944:
“I hope to see C. S. L. and Charles W. tomorrow morning and read my next chapter on the passage of the Dead Marshes and the approach to the Gates of Mordor...
The afternoon was squandered on plumbing (stopping overflow) and cleaning out fowls.”*
Great stories are written on a normal Tuesday afternoon.
What are you going to create within your everyday?
Hear me discussing the 75th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on BBC Radio Wales, 9am Sunday 23rd February
One of the most foundational books in shaping my imagination is C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, so I was delighted to record a panel discussion of the book along with author Hannah Hess and academic Catherine Butler to be aired this Sunday!
Tune in to BBC Radio Wales 9.30am on Sunday, or listen back on BBC Sounds for 30 days after broadcast: All Things Considered
Poetry appearances
A pair of my poems have been selected for the Hadau 2025 Exhibition on the theme Is it Finished?, which runs at Urban Crofters in Cardiff from Saturday 1st March to Thursday 8th May. To launch this gathering of Welsh Artists you are invited to the Open Evening on Saturday 1st March from 7:30pm. Book a free ticket here.
I’ve also got a slot at Parc Arts’ Open Mic Night on Thursday 27th February at 7.30pm where I’ll be sharing a couple of recent poems. Join us!