Thomas Keily
Thomas is the Head Librarian at The Library of Love, the home of the world's great love poetry. He also leads guided poetry bush walks. A former cabaret troupe director.
Workshop/Presentation
Poetry as Psychedelic Sacrament
“A poet is someone dedicated to the place where silence becomes words.”
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara
Higher level psychedelic experiences happen in a ‘place beyond words’, but mystics have often used poetry as a way to bridge the gap between the rational and the transcendental experience, and “point the way home” (Rumi), or “give us a taste of the distillation” (Whitman). The poetry that they leave us can then work like a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest, guiding us back to the states and stations they experienced. When we memorise these poems, as ritual traditions have done through all of human history, these maps then ‘live in the body’, and change us in gentle and profound ways.
