Word Beneath the Words with Malcolm Guite

Word Beneath the Words with Malcolm Guite

We’re joined on our podcast by poet, priest and songwriter, Malcolm Guite. With grace and insight, Malcolm has written of the mystery, beauty and imaginative force of language and the ways in which our imaginations apprehend truth that our reason cannot fully comprehend:

“Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, and all your mind. And somewhere in all those ‘alls’ is all your imagination.  And in fact, when we look at the teaching of Jesus, it's mostly an appeal to the imagination as a way of perceiving truth in a fresh way. He tells stories and parables.”

We trust that you’ll be inspired by the beauty of Guite’s poetry, and by the ways in which the poetic imagination brings healing to the false divide between the subjective and the objective.

• 04:44 The Connection Between the Priestly and Poetic Vocations
• 12:02 The Role of Imagination in Apprehending Truth
• 17:48 The Responsibility of Language and the Power of Words
• 23:24 The Idea of Being Spoken into Being
• 32:25 The Destructive Power of Words
• 36:23 The Importance of Intellectual Hospitality

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Malcolm Guite.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

John Donne

Love, Remember, by Malcolm Guite

Parable and Paradox, by Malcolm Guite

Theology and the Poetic Imagination, by Malcolm Guite

The Singing Bowl, by Malcolm Guite

Waiting on the Word, by Malcolm Guite

Lifting the Veil, by Malcolm Guite

Sounding the Seasons, by Malcolm Guite

The Word Within the Words, by Malcolm Guite

Gerard Manley Hopkins

George Herbert

R.S. Thomas

Seamus Heaney

John Keats

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wiliiam Wordsworth

William Shakespeare

C. S. Lewis

Sir Andrews

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

John Milton

Edmund Spenser

Thomas Clarkson

Pilgrim's Progress

Diana Glyer

David's Crown, by Malcolm Guite

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Spirit and Imagination, selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge with an introduction by Malcolm Guite

Bulletins from Immortality: Poems by Emily Dickinson

God's Grandeur: The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sacred and Profane Love, featuring the poetry of John Donne

Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.