Thinking and Singing: Poetry and the Practice of Philosophy

Investigations into the role and importance of poetry in the culture of the mind and consciousness by some of our foremost practitioners of the art. Tim Lilburn and his interlocutors have been carrying on their five-pointed conversation about the relationship between poetry and philosophy for over a decade. The results of the moveable discussion have been delivered in a collection of impecably written essays, each one stamped with the artistic personality of the author.

Robert Bringhurst is the author of a work of cultural anthropology and has translated two volumes of narrative poetry from Haida. He lives on the British Columbia Coast.

 

Dennis Lee is the author of the Governor General's Literary Award-Winning Civil Elegies and Other Poems, as well as many other collections of poetry and essays about poetry. Dennis Lee is the first poet laureate of Toronto.

 

Don MacKay has won the Governor General's Literary Award twice, for Nightfield (1991) and, most recently, for Another Gravity (2000). He is one of the publishers of Brick Books and lives in Victoria, B.C.

 

Jan Zwicky won the Governor General's Literary Award for Songs for Relinquishing the Earth (1999). She lives in Victoria, where she teaches philosophy at the University of Victoria.  

Tim Lilburn has published several volumes of poetry and is the author of Living in the World As If it Were Home, winner of the Saskatchewan Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award and finalist for the Saskatoon Book Award. He teaches philosophy and literature at St. Peter's College in Muenster, Saskatchewan, and lives in Saskatoon, near the South Saskatchewan River.