INVISIBLE

All these qualities are needed, but almost after the fact, as secondary powers, after we have leant against an invisible door that is no door at all, after we have brought together many layers of reality where before we were living in a single dimension, and after we have started to converse with the life that lies over the horizon of what we can presently understand and imagine for ourselves.

It is only over the last few years that I have come fully to understand that much of my way forward as a poet and philosopher has been guided and transformed by an often unconscious relationship to the invisible, both within the written art form itself and in the singular way I have taken the powers of poetry out into the world, to as many people as possible. As I have come to terms with and faced this dynamic of the untouchable and invisible continually made real, and as I have made my relationship with what seems invisible more conscious, the magnifying effect has been almost overwhelming, which then brought me to the next crucial step: facing this overwhelm is only possible through making invitations, visible and invisible, to others who can help us. We must learn to speak to what lies invisible and unstirred in others, and invite those people - and their surprising powers, and their surprising generosity, to join with ours.

I count myself very lucky in having gathered a very generous and supportive readership and listenership, but perhaps just as importantly, in being privileged to work with inspiring individuals who have come to join me in my endeavours, and who have brought their invisible powers to join in very surprising ways with mine, and to make the invisible very visible indeed and in very practical ways every day of the year. There would be no printed books, no Three Sundays Series, no walking on stage before an audience of thousands without the visible and invisible helps of these creatives or without the help of many others. In the end, of course, they are not 'my team’ or 'my readers' or 'my listeners' or 'my financial supporters' - they have their own sacred relationship with what lies over the horizon, which they touch through the magnifying effects of the work. The magic only continues to happen when there is just enough magic for everyone.

Please join me for Three Sundays in July to follow these invisible but ever-present dynamics closely, and to imagine how this ‘magic’ might work in your own life.