As part of the first Bradford Literature Festival, Bishop Nick hosted an evening of sacred poetry and music from across several religious traditions on Sunday.
He said, "The poet can show you new ways to see. Poetry opens the imagination and can scratch away at the mind - getting in where proposition often doesn't.
"This isn't worship (and we might not necessarily agree or understand), but we are given the opportunity to encounter the unfamiliar, an expression of the other through cultures and languages that aren't ours. To hear their view of God, the world and us."
The large audience heard from renowned artists performing a variety of styles of devotional music, including naats, bhajans and kirtans and choirs, as well as sacred poetry recitations.
The artists expressed their sense of honour at performing in the cathedral, and much of their material expressed their own tradition's emphasis on prayer, love and understanding of the other, forgiveness and the pursuit of peace.
The evening ended with a recitation by award winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The other contributors were Yasmin Babiker, Inder Goldfinger, Shabnam Khan, Supriya Nagarajan and Rudi Leavor (Chairman of Bradford Synagogue).
With hesitation, Bishop Nick also shared one of his own poems. He said, "I am not a poet, but many years ago, while visiting a war cemetery in Normandy I wrote the following:
A field of white stones
and simple crosses
with wishful words
and solemn epitaphs.
Known unto God means
we hadn’t a clue who he was.
Just another mangled inconnu
in a field of bloody might-have-beens.
Rest in peace sounds like an apology
for the hostility and brutality
of his untimely death.
I did not know him,
nor do I know those who miss him,
who still, half a world away,
miss the sound of his voice
and hear the agony of his eternal silence.
But I, also an inconnu, a nobody,
whisper an apology at his space,
and pray silently
for never again
and not for mine.