Sacred Poetry: Insight and Inspiration

Listening to and reading sacred poetry can lift us up, inspire our days and take us to a deeper understanding of the Divine. Ivan Granger is a poet and editor of The Longing In Between: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry from Around the World.  Listen in and be inspired!

Ivan Granger, the founder and editor of the Poetry Chaikhana, a publishing house and online resource for sacred poetry from around the world. He is the author of Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey. He is also the editor of The Longing in Between: A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology, and This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World. His poetry and translations have been included in several magazines and anthologies.

THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: This program with poet Ivan Granger and Dr. Laurel Trujillo was thought provoking. It started with the poem by Gabriel Rosenstock that inspired the title of his anthology of spiritual poetry, The Longing in Between.

A star
A tree
And the longing in between

 This began an insightful conversation about the significance of poetry as inspiration on our spiritual path. Ivan talked about poetry being a verbal art. When the poem is read out loud the breath affects consciousness. The reader shares the breath rhythm of the author. Ivan’s last thought was his conviction that inspiration is something essential and fundamental in the flow of life and should be a daily practice.

DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: I really enjoyed our conversation about sacred poetry, including the poems that Ivan Granger and I each read aloud.  I appreciated his description of the relationship between longing and union in sacred poetry, that it is a spectrum where these two aspects are connected.  I think this was demonstrated by several of the poems that we shared.  We discussed how the words “yoga” and “religion” both mean union.   I so enjoyed his description of poetry as a magnetic pole, one that allows meaning to gather as we continue to reflect on the poem over time.