23 Facts About Malcolm Guite

Ayodeji Malcolm Guite is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest and academic.

Malcolm Guite was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, and an associate chaplain of St Edward King and Martyr, Cambridge.

Malcolm Guite is the author of five books of poetry, including two chapbooks and three full-length collections, as well as several books on Christian faith and theology.

Malcolm Guite has a YouTube page, where he shares his passions and musings with his viewers.

Malcolm Guite was born on 12 November 1957 in Ibadan, Oyo State, in the Federation of Nigeria.

Malcolm Guite's parents were British expatriates living in Nigeria, where his father was a Methodist lay preacher who travelled around the country evangelising.

Malcolm Guite's father taught as lecturer in classics at the University of Ibadan.

Malcolm Guite attended the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree, Hertfordshire.

Malcolm Guite describes the boarding school experience as terrible, an "atmosphere of guilt, oppression and general alienation" where he strayed from his childhood Christian faith.

Malcolm Guite adds that after these two events he "fell in love with Cambridge, and I've never quite escaped its gravitational pull".

Malcolm Guite chose to be confirmed in the Church of England shortly after.

Malcolm Guite graduated from Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts, later automatically upgraded to Master of Arts in English Literature in 1980.

Malcolm Guite was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1991.

Malcolm Guite put poetry aside for seven years, "in order to concentrate on and learn deeply my priestly vocation, and life in my parishes was totally absorbing and demanding so it felt right to let the other fields lie fallow".

Malcolm Guite teaches in the pastoral theology graduate programme at the Cambridge Theological Federation where he frequently advises "clergy who are returning to academia to do a dissertation to reflect on their often amazing parish experiences".

Since October 2014 Malcolm Guite has been a visiting research fellow at St John's College, Durham.

Malcolm Guite has collaborated with Canadian singer-songwriter Steve Bell for several tracks on a 4-CD set by Bell called Pilgrimage that was released in 2014 by Signpost Music.

Malcolm Guite writes the weekly "Poet's Corner" column for the Church Times, an Anglican newspaper.

Malcolm Guite has been interviewed several times on the newspaper's podcast.

Malcolm Guite's poetry has been characterised as modern-day metaphysical poems and psalms.

Malcolm Guite's poetry tends to conform to traditional forms, especially the sonnet, and employs both rhyme and metre.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, remarked that Malcolm Guite "knows exactly how to use the sonnet form to powerful effect" and that his poems "offer deep resources for prayer and meditation to the reader".

Holly Ordway, Professor of English at Houston Christian University, writes that "Malcolm Guite helps us see clearly and deeply how poetry allows us to know truth in a different but complementary way to propositional, rational argument" in her review of Faith, Hope, and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination.