In Praise of Listening: Christian McEwen and Susan Moon
Past Event
February 17,2024
Christian McEwen returns to Point Reyes to discuss her new book, In Praise of Listening (Bauhan Pub.) with Susan Moon. Both are Mesa Refuge alums!
In her new book, In Praise of Listening, Christian McEwen reflects on listening (silence, music, nature, prayer) in a series of thoughtful chapters, each one focused on a different theme. When an athlete speaks of “listening to his body,” or a gardener describes herself as “listening to the land,” when writers and artists explain that they are “listening” to their work-in-progress, they are using the word as she chooses to use it here–as an extended metaphor for openness and receptivity, rippling out from the self-centered human to the farthest reaches of the non-human world.
In Praise of Listening is a kind of sister or first cousin to McEwen’s earlier, timely, and very popular, World Enough & Time (Bauhan Publishing, 2011), with the same emphasis on creativity and slowing down. As McEwen says: Most of us think of listening in fairly literal fashion: human beings listening (or not listening) to one another; the pleasure of attending to a familiar piece of music. But listening can have a far broader and more capacious meaning, moving out beyond the small apparatus of the ears to the hands or belly or enveloping spirit/mind.
Christian McEwen is a writer, educator, and cultural activist. Since leaving New York City twenty years ago, she has edited two anthologies, and produced a video documentary Tomboys!, and a play, Legal Tender: Women & the Secret Life of Money. Her book, World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down (2011) is now in its sixth printing, and is also available in an audio format. Her most recent collection, Sparks from the Anvil: The Smith College Poetry Interviews, appeared in spring 2015. Christian grew up in the Borders of Scotland, and now lives in western Massachusetts.
Co-presented with Point Reyes Books. Held in the Main Hall of the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station.