Telling the Beads: A Spiritual Year Book for Our Times merges devotional poetry (to, if anyone, Anglo-Saxon goddesses mainly) tied to the Anglo-Saxon calendar with avant-garde poetic practice. Or, another way, is a version of Brecht's Hauspostille rewritten by a dogmatically polytheist agnostic amateur antiquarian. Yes, all sorts of things are here, from Tolkien filtered through Tove Jansson's art to the cafes of Bishops Stortford, via an attempt to recover the vanished hero Unwin the Un-Friend. Bits are prose too. And there are illustrations - many splendid early-Nineteenth century engravings.