During this time of upheaval and uncertainty, the Kylemore Abbey Global Centre would like to offer opportunities for inspiration, encouragement and reflection, perhaps leading to a reconnection with your own creative, inner resources. Guided by faculty member Dr. Melvin Dowdy from the executive Inspirational Leadership program at Kylemore, participants will embark together on a journey to greater self-awareness and appreciation of life, cultivating resilience during this time of disruption, despair and feelings of helplessness.
The Global Centre is inviting the public to join in on this journey and help create a virtual community to share thoughts, poems, music, art, and stories. The goal is to move participants to perhaps re-imagine life in a profoundly different way. Participants are encouraged to interact with the posts, send feedback and submit topics.
Check out Dowdy's full poem “Noli Timere: Remembering Seamus Heaney” and follow the series on the Kylemore Abbey Global Centre’s Instagram, Twitter and Facebook pages with the usernames @undkylemore.
Weekly Poems
- Week 1: Noli Timere - Remembering Seamus Heaney (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 2: Did You Notice the Forsythia (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 3: To Reimagine Life (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 4: Protests in Richmond (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 5: Wild Geese (by Mary Oliver)
- Week 6: It Is I Who Must Begin (by Vaclav Havel)
- Week 7: Tuskar Rock Lighthouse: On Freedom During a Pandemic (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 8: Richmond's Lament (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 9: Ask Me (by William Stafford)
- Week 10: Swimming (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 11: Love After Love (by Derek Walcott)
- Week 12: The Way It Is (by William Stafford)
- Week 13: Ask, Seek, Knock (by Melvin Dowdy)
- Week 14: The Wild Rose (by Wendell Berry)