Everything Matters--Creative Imagination with Rainer Maria Rilke

Explore the imaginative world that lives in Rilke’s poems with one of the leading interpreters and award-winning translators of his writings. We will consider what Rilke meant when he insisted that “poems are not feelings, but experiences,” and what it means to encounter—and write—poems with that in mind. Rilke also insisted that everything, to the minutest of things, was alive as part of what he called “the Whole,” and thus that everything mattered. His poems encourage us to widen the lens of our perception to the point that we begin to see that—and how—“everything matters” in our lives and in the world we inhabit together.

A widely celebrated translator and interpreter of Rilke’s poetry, Mark S. Burrows’ new translation of his Sonnets to Orpheus appeared earlier this year to considerable acclaim. His most recent book, You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke (co-written with Stephanie Dowrick), explores a dozen of Rilke’s poems, engaging them as sources of wisdom and insight for living creatively in our times. Until 2020, Burrows held a professorship in religion and literature in Bochum, Germany, and is widely known as a public speaker and retreat leader, across the US and in the UK, Europe, and Australia. He is also a poet and serves as poetry editor for the international journal Spiritus and for Wildhouse Publishing; in 2023, he co-founded—with Meg Weston—the Camden Festival of Poetry. He lives and writes in Camden, ME. www.msburrows.com

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