As the coronavirus situation rolls out across the world, there has been a proliferation of creativity – everything from amateur dramatics and puns to the broadcasting of art and music. Some high-profile musicians have been live streaming from their bedrooms. 

Art in all its forms allows us to be fully human, to create meaning and to nurture what unites us. That’s why this week’s free eBook is The Poet’s Way by Manjusvara. You can download it here. It will be available until the 27th of April. 

Manjusvara was part of the team that started up Wolf at the Door writing retreats and workshops. This book is his practical guide to reading and writing poetry, and it includes many of the exercises developed on those retreats. You will find yourself looking again at what was once unremarkable – the toaster, the texture of the floor underfoot – and language will come alive. Poetry, he says, is where thought, image and feeling interweave. It sensitises. 

Though you may not imagine yourself a poet, you might surprise yourself with a haiku or two by the end of the book. Even if you don’t write anything yourself, this book offers a guide to reading poetry. You will become more sensitive to line, shape, rhythm and patterns and feel the power of naming. 

Last week we also released a labour of love, Poems and Short Stories, Volume 25 in The Complete Works of Sangharakshita. The volume has a foreword by Padmavajra and two essays, by Vishvantara and Vishvapani, which introduce the poems in different ways. It is a repository of many of the poems you might have read or heard at pujas and meditations. It is a guide to understanding the man who founded the Triratna Buddhist Community and Order, and an intimate portrait of creativity in spiritual life. 

You can buy Poems and Short Stories as a stand-alone work in paperback, hardback or eBook editions, or as combined print and digital editions here. You can also subscribe to the Complete Works here. 

If you create a free account on our website you get 10% off all purchases, including Complete Works volumes (excluding subscriptions, which are already discounted). You can sign up for your free account here.