This two-day residential workshop will explore contemplative and devotional literature from the Middle Ages to the present, including medieval prose and poetry from the Christian and Islamic traditions, and Romantic, modern and contemporary responses to the sacred, nature writing, and ecocriticism. The workshop will include a variety of sessions that combine works of devotional literature with meditative or embodied exercises, inviting participants to respond to the texts presented in a variety of ways. Caromai Bouquet, a mindfulness teacher and practitioner, will invite us to contemplate the poetry of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist poet, teacher and activist, through guided meditation, as well as close reading and analysis. Marie-Elsa Bragg, an author, teacher, and priest, will present the ritual of the Eucharist alongside poetry, memoir and fragments of unsent letters. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead will lead a practical workshop on The Cloud of Unknowing, a work of medieval English mysticism which encourages its readers to pursue the negative path to enlightenment by emptying the mind and co-ordinating one-word prayers with the breath. This will be complemented by mystical poetry from the Islamic tradition and a yoga workshop based on St Francis’s thirteenth-century ‘Canticle to the Sun’. Finally, by reading ecocritical poetry as we walk through the beautiful woods and alpine meadows around Chemin Dessus, Simon Swift will allow us to experience first-hand how nature writing can resonate with the sacred.

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