Toward the end of April, I had the honor of giving a keynote presentation at the National Association for Poetry Therapy national conference in Black Mountain, N.C. Thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for us to craft a beloved community throughout our lives — an endeavor that brings into being “a reconciled world by raising the level of relationships among people to a height where justice prevails and persons attain their full human potential” — and the power of writing, reading, and living poetry as key to that reconciled world, I wrote this talk in six parts, exploring ways to find and join our people on this path as well as the path’s mythic, healing, and ecological dimensions.
Poetry is the phone line between the surface of our lives and our deepest callings, a lifelong conversation full of confusion, clarity, trespasses through fear or delight, and a whole lot of divining for water with some sticks out in the wilderness. It’s our flashlight in the dark woods, showing us where and how to step next.
Here is the full talk: NAPTTalk2015pdf
