Joy Bostic talks about Africana spirituality and its expression in popular music and dance
‘These embodied rituals which involve movement, gestures, and verbal affirmations, call and response, etc. – all these are strategies that enable us to have an experience of, or open the way for the possibility of experiencing, spirit.’
Neil Astley, founder of Bloodaxe Books, talks about the universal appeal of contemporary poetry and the series of inspiring anthologies he has edited
‘Poetry makes something happen in people themselves – in how they are in their being, in how they deal with things, whether they are personal situations or shared with a whole nation or the whole world.’
Andrew Watson pays homage to Greece’s most famous modern poet, whose message of quiet fidelity to our own values still has great resonance today
‘What matters is the spirit in which the journey is undertaken: the desire to observe, to learn, to seek beauty, to take time…’
British conductor James Lowe talks about the nature of music and the influence of the Tao Te Ching on his work
‘Great art and music dissolves barriers, allowing us to touch on something transpersonal, something above ourselves.’
Hina Khalid explores the theological aesthetics of the great Bengali poet
‘At the heart of Tagore’s cosmology is the notion that the world is joyously sung into being. This creative sonic effusion is continually resounding through the cosmos in ever-new forms.’
Robert Hirschfield talks to the Canadian poet and psychologist
‘The salient feature of haiku is an almost painfully heightened awareness of some feature of the universe’