Poetry: Imagination’s Wake Up Call – a conversation

Regulars will know that I’ve been doing increasing amounts with the fair friends of the Rabbit Room in Nashville. So today, a couple more bits or bobs.

First up, there are 3 more 5&1 Classical music playlists:

• #4 A Sense of Humour: some musical jokes
• #5 A Dark & Stormy Night: some music for Halloween
• #6 Welcome to the Waltz: take your partners please…

This weekend sees the end of access to all the video elements of Hutchmoot Homebound (the annual Rabbit Room bonanza, online this year for obvious reasons). So I can now post my contribution, a filmed interview with the great and generous Malcolm Guite. Well, I enjoyed it, certainly. And there’s real treasure here – definitely worth an hour of your time, even if you don’t quite ‘get’ poetry; or perhaps especially if you don’t. Such a helpful corrective to the depleting, if not downright dehumanising, distortions of post-Enlightenment life. 

And while you’re at it, get hold of some of his books mentioned, why don’t you:

• Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge I just loved this book – couldn’t put it down
• The Singing Bowl: Collected poems by Malcolm Guite From which his poems Imagine and C. S. Lewis come
• Faith, Hope & Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination A more academic and demanding book, perhaps, but richly rewarding.

Then there’s also this little gem.

• Waiting on the Word: A poem a day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany: because it’s coming up for that time of year. I worked through it last year at this time and loved it. Am going to do it again, I think!