Meet the Bard. Aka Sarah de Nordwall. She’s the Christian poet with her own Bard School.

Not heard of them? Well, Bards – court poets esteemed for their prophetic insight - and the schools that train them were last commonplace in 8th century Ireland.

“The Bards in ancient Ireland were worth the King’s Ransom,” explains de Nordwall. “That means if they were taken in battle the people would have to pay a ransom for them as big as a King’s, and Christians are worth the ransom of Christ.”

The modern equivalent - a monthly gathering of artists, film-makers, poets, musicians and writers – meets in a Soho church basement to talk, to perform, and to pray.

“We are God’s poema” says de Nordwall. The word, she explains, is Greek. “It means to be made”, and God’s relationship with the artist is, she suggests, both personal and dynamic, an encounter that is continually unfolding.

It is also transfiguring: “because in order to transform you must be transfigured” is the Bard School motto, a reference to the Transfiguration, the Biblical passage where Jesus brings his disciples up Mount Tabor where Moses and Elijah appear to them in dazzling light.

What this means, argues de Nordwall, is that all meaningful change begins within. The key to this inner transformation is to contemplate God and to allow his spirit to “undo” the emotional knots caused by holding grudges, by an inability to forgive, by anger, or being unable to accept and love ourselves or others.

Though she is committed to organisational change (and has worked with charities such as Action Aid in Pakistan and India) she says external structures cannot be effectively altered unless inner change precedes them.

“As Christian artists we are called to be Ipse Christus (another Christ) – there is this immense mystery that the Holy Spirit dwells within us.”

As well as transfiguring the wounds of the heart, God wishes, she claims to transfigure art into his image. Which is why each February 2nd, on the feast of Candlemas (which marks the presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple in the Bible) Bards attend a special Mass, where each brings their works of art ( paintings, poems, novels, or songs) in whatever state they are in – to the altar, as a symbol explains de Nordwall, that all artistic gifts come from God, and a request for his blessing upon them.

“This is very meaningful for artists who have often felt a little pushed out, ironically from Church or rather parishes sometimes don’t know how to engage with them,” says de Nordwall who charts her own journey in poetry that is thought provoking, yet easy-on-the-ear, or as she describes it “skippy yet deep.”

With titles like The Universe was not a home or Lipstick is a Spiritual Experience, the title of her first cd, they pack a philosophical punch.