Sounding the Silence—Contemplation as Poetic Practice; Poetry as Contemplative Practice

15 May, 2024

We are deeply honoured to welcome Dr Aaron Maniam, Senior Fellow at the Oxford Interfaith Forum, and Director of Digital Transformation Education at Blavatnik School of Governance, University of Oxford, to lead a session of the International Interfaith Reading Group on ART in Interfaith Contexts.

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Here are more details of this fascinating event.

Title: Sounding the Silence—Contemplation as Poetic Practice; Poetry as Contemplative Practice

Abstract: The concept of ‘lectio divina’ is well-known, especially in Christian contemplative circles: the ‘divine reading’ of scripture and other texts that involves levels of engagement deeper than the merely intellectual and analytical. It often involves letting texts speak to us, or letting ourselves be spoken by a text, beyond reading for content and ideas.
This talk explores how the writing of religious poetry can involve similar drives and energies. Does contemplative poetry write itself? What do we make of the words between the words, the silences and rests under the textual content? It will draw on both global examples of religious poetry, from multiple faith traditions, as well as the speaker’s own writing as an award-winning poet, interfaith dialogue facilitator and enthusiast of contemplative practice—in addition to his day job as Director of Digital Transformation Education at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

Speaker’s biography: Dr Aaron Maniam is a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Interfaith Forum. He is a Polymath. Aaron’s work as Director of Digital Transformation Education at Blavatnik School of Governance, University of Oxford, focuses on issues connecting technology, public policy and public administration. He teaches on the School’s Master of Public Policy and executive education programmes, and convenes its digital ‘thematic cluster’, bringing together scholarship and practice on digital issues. He co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Technology Policy and is a member of the OECD’s Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Futures.
Aaron received the First Prize for English poetry in the National Arts Council’s Golden Point Award in 2003. He is the author of Morning at Memory’s Border, which was his debut poetry collection and was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2007, and Second Person, the second anthology of poems (firstfruits publications, 2018).
In 2009, Aaron was one of 50 poets featured in Fifty on 50, a collection to mark Singapore’s 50th anniversary of internal self-government. He has read his poetry at the Austin International Poetry Festival and for Australia’s ABC Radio.
In 2011, the French government invited Aaron as a featured poet to the 35th Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and published his work in the bilingual journal La Traductiere as well as the French Journal des Poètes.
In 2014, Aaron was one of the writers featured in the University of Hong Kong’s Becoming Poets: The Asian English Experience, which describes the creative process of a range of writers in various Asian countries.
In 2015, three of Aaron’s poems were featured in From Walden to Woodlands, an anthology of interfaith nature poetry in Singapore.