Photo by Karen Fuchs

This is the website where we celebrate the power of poetry to help us think differently; to help us value life and each other with depth, and to ask courageous questions about our own lives – to encourage us, before we die, to live into the best that we are. Great poetry is a catalyst for change: a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of life. Roger Housden has written many popular books on the creative force that poetry can spark in our lives. His new book, Ten Poems To Change Your Life Again and Again (November 2007) takes ten remarkable poems from around the world and uses their powerful imagery to give shape to our unspoken dreams, aspirations, and longings. In the process, the book raises questions – inherent in the poems themselves – about what it means to be human.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning
a new arrival.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

- Rumi/Coleman Barks

 

Interview with Kris Welch for The Living Room Show, KPFA Radio Berkeley.

In his keynote lectures, poetry recitals, and retreats Roger explores how the images and creative language of poetry, and also art, can transform our way of thinking and lead us to live a more deeply felt life. Click here to schedule an event with Roger.

Poetry can also change lives in a concrete, material way. Our Poetry For Water page shows how one evening of poetry can generate enough funds to bring water to a village in Africa.

 

Implicit throughout this website is our culture’s need for fresh ideas – ideas that light the fire of our passion for life; that challenge us to see the world with new eyes. “Philosophy,” Socrates said, “is a bite in the heart to any young and gifted soul.” At its best, poetry is a direct transmission of truth; a universal language that conveys the depths of human experience without dogma or sermons. Through his books and talks, Roger Housden is an advocate and mediator for this language, both in the public worlds of work and family, and in the personal world of self reflection.

“Housden’s book provides the key to life’s best kept secret garden, a place the reader can receive refuge and sustenance for the rest of her life.”