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 beautifully of the mystery, 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.

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
William Wordsworth
William Shakespeare
C.S. Lewis
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.