The scholar of Native American literature on the vivid tradition of Haida poetry. Robert Bringhurst is a poet, linguist, translator, and essayist who has championed, in a series of remarkable books and lectures, the literary heritage of Native American culture. He’s made it his calling to enroll oral mythtelling in the canon of world literature, ...
Derrick Jensen: I’d like to start with two questions that might actually be one. They are: Is the natural world alive? And second, what is magic? David Abram: Is there really anything that is not alive? Certainly we are alive, and if we assume that the natural world is in some sense not alive, it ...
Jeremy Hayward: Maybe we could begin by talking a little bit about animism. It seems to me that the main thing you are trying to communicate in The Spell of the Sensuous is a sense that the world is not made of dead matter—that there’s actually abundant life and intelligence everywhere. David Abram: One of ...
Intro by Dougald Hine: In the opening pages of The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram stands in the night outside his hut in Bali, the stars spread across the sky, mirrored from below in the water of the rice paddies, and countless fireflies dancing in between. This disorientating abundance of wonder is close to ...