New Proost poetry podcast stream…

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Chris Goan

Annoucing a new poetry thing (and looking for collaborators)

Before Christmas (on this blog and elsewhere) we curated a series of beautiful contributions of poems, videos and songs produced by what is starting to feel like a developing Proost community. It was a lovely thing to be part of and this has given us an interesting template for future collaborative work.

During this run of daily posts, in the busy days of preparation, when it seems we have so little time for reflection, we released two poetry podcasts. These followed a simple format – three poets each reading two poems then talking about them in the round and allowing them to take us into deeper connection. I participated in both and they were profund, beautiful and even sacred.

If you have not had the chance to listen to them yet (and given the pre-Christmas pressure, you are forgiven) then here they are.

The first featured two Australian poets, Talitha Fraser and Stevie Wills. It was extraordinary.

The next featured two old friends of mine, Mark Berry and Ali Matthew. There was no guarantee that the magic of the first poetry pod would be repeated, but afterwards it felt like I was emerging from a great forest or an ancient cathedral.

In reflecting on these sessions, we think there is so much here that we want to continue. The sense of community, a genuine exchange of hearts, the way that poetry always takes us deeper, the conversation about things that matter, the mutual ancouragement of voices and poems that might otherwise never be heard. The deep generous spirituality woven through it all.

In other words, these podcasts seem to gather so much of what we hope that the new Proost is all about…

…so we want to make this a new regular podcast stream.

The idea is to develop a small team of people to ‘chair’ these discussions and for each podcast to involve at least two more poets on each episode. To connect with these poets, we will be casting the net as wide as possible, looking to connect with poetic voices who are exploring spirituality through this medium – after all, is not poetry first and foremost a spiritual discipline?

If you are interested in this, please drop me a line. If you know of other poets that we should be talking to, then it would be great to hear about them.

How this all develops will depend on the community that gathers around it – as with all Proost activities – but it genuinely feels as though this simple format offers a brand new way to do reflection and spiritual adventure.

Remaking religion pod 6: pod chat…

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Chris Goan

You may be aware that Rob and I have been podcasting as a means of making connections relevant to the revival of an old publishing platform called Proost. What this might look like is starting to take place- we are determined that whatever Proost is will depend on the community that comes together to make it happen. Our committment is to provide spaces for this community to happen. If you are interested in knowing more about this, feel free to drop me a message, or join our facebook group– it is a closed group, but this is simply to keep it a safe supportive place for those who need it.

This advent, we will be inviting artists to contribute to a collaborative daily offering

Some of these will be live poetry readings.

We would genuinely love to connect as many of you who want ot be part of this embryonic movement. There is a possibility here of the development of a very different kind of space for spirituality and creativity. It may be chaotic, but Rob and I are determined to make sure that it will be kind, supportive and fun.

(We don’t have posh mikes on our pod by the way)

Rob is a lovely man. He is so encouraging and enthusiastic about other people’s work – mine included. He had been following the long form ponderings on this blog about the renewal of religion (spool back through the feed – we are up to 7 posts in the series now) so he asked if we could chat through some of this on the Proost podcast.

Iniitialy I was reluctant, for these reasons;

I was not sure I could articulate my thinking in a chat. I tend to think by writing. In the end though, I decided I did not need to post it if it did not go well!
Was the Proost format an appropriate place for this discussion? As I thought about this though, it seemed to me that the Proost project is driven by the same thoughts and feelings
Finally, I am conscious that so many friends – including some who areninvolved in Proost – are still very much involved in organised religion. But then again, most of these have similar frustrations with elements of the old religion.

So we had the chat. In the end I enjoyed it – perhaps too much, as Rob had to slow me down! Being interviewed rather than being the interviewer is an interesting experience, and I was surprised how far the themes and issues unfolded. We will probably do one more as well. I will leave it to you to decide whether the podcast format helps to explore these complex issues more helpfully than written words…

Here it is.

‘Making missional communities’ podcasts…

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Chris Goan

Graham sent us a copy of the recording of our talk about making small missional communities at Calvary Christian Fellowship near Preston.

We were invited to take a road trip to describe something of our experiences with Aoradh, and we structured the discussion into three main sections ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘up’ with me talking about some of the background and theory (such as it is!) behind what we do, and Michaela describing our activities in a bit more detail. We tried to be really honest about the difficult bits as well as all the great stuff.

I have uploaded it as a series of podcasts, partly because other folk in Aoradh might be interested to know what we said about them, and also because the issue of how we make and sustain community in these fluid postmodern times seems to be pretty important, so others might like to hear something of our story.

You should be able to download the different sections on these links, but I am told that ‘ourmedia’ sometimes takes a little while to make uploads ‘live’, so you may need to come back a little later…

Making missional communities 1

Making missional communities 2

Making missional communities 3

Making missional communities 4

Making missional communities 5

Making missional communities 6

Making missional communities 7

Making missional communities 8