Recitatio-Revelation
by Oli Higham
When: 1:30pm - 2:30pm, Saturday 28th June
Where: Old Kilpatrick Parish Church
Age Rating: All welcome
Recitatio: Revelation is a public reading of the Book of Revelation, performed aloud from beginning to end by multiple voices. In ancient Rome, a "recitatio" was a public event — a gathering where texts were spoken to a crowd, filling streets, forums, and meeting places with poetry, politics, and stories.
In that same spirit, we bring Revelation back into the public square: not as a private text to be silently read, but as a living, urgent voice to be heard together.
You are welcome to come for the whole journey, to be immersed in the sweeping, strange, and vivid vision from start to finish. Or you can step in for a few moments — listen for a while, then move on, carrying fragments of the story with you.
As multiple readers lend their voices, Revelation shifts and shimmers: sometimes fierce, sometimes tender, always pulsing with resistance and hope. Dragons, thrones, trumpets, and cities rise and fall in the air between us. It is a text written for a community living under empire, calling them — and us — to imagine a different kind of world breaking through the cracks of the old.
Recitatio: Revelation is an act of reclaiming this ancient text as a shared experience: a song of warning, a song of hope, a song for a people still longing for a new creation.
Please note: For Recitatio-Revelation you are welcome to come and go as you please.
About the Artist
Oli Higham is a poet and pastor whose work lives at the intersection of faith, justice, and imagination. Drawing on ancient texts, everyday moments, and the raw edges of spiritual life, his poetry invites reflection, resistance, and re-enchantment. As a pastor, he is rooted in community, guiding others through stories of struggle and hope. As a spoken word artist, he weaves language that comforts and disrupts, offering a grounded, transcendent voice reaching toward the possibility of something better.
Roman Fest is made possible through Creative Scotland's Extended Programme Fund
