Celebrating Black Spiritual Poetry course
This Black History Month, come be challenged, inspired and empowered by a day meditating with Black spiritual poetry.
Together we will read and reflect on poems that invite us on a journey: wider into the world and deeper into ourselves. If you have never encountered these words before, or if they are familiar friends, come find food for the soul, resources for the church and a catalyst for great conversation.
This day will focus on great words by Black poets from a range of times and places: from some of the greats of the African American tradition, to poetry in response to enslavement and injustice, African and Caribbean voices and contemporary British artists.
The sessions will guide you through some great works by Black poets: celebrating their craft, reflecting on the themes they raise and interrogating our personal responses to each poem. Along the way we will explore themes of suffering and protest, exile and home, hope and reconciliation. We will consider together the place that these texts might hold in our personal and collective spiritual imagination, in our shared histories, in our common worship.
with Jarel Robinson-Brown, an Anglican priest, a citizen of Jamaica and the UK, currently living in Wales. He sees poetry as a way to communicate political and spiritual ideas as well as a means of shaping and preserving African and Caribbean identity and culture.
and Beth Dodd, a tutor for ministerial training at Sarum College, who has written about on poetry, hip hop and the spoken word. She reflects with her ministry students on issues of faith and practice in relation to racial justice.
Leave a Reply