Soul Search

Stories about gardening run deep in many cultures – from the garden of the gods in the epic of Gilgamesh, to the garden of Eden in the biblical book of Genesis. Gardening is also a practice that, for some people, connects the body, soil and soul. On Soul Search Costa Georgiadis shares about the life lessons he's learnt from gardening. 

More from Soul Search:

• How gardening is a conversation
• The surprising role of grass in shaping who we are

In today's fast-paced, tech-saturated society, is it possible to live a life of fulfilment? Until his recent death, the writer, farmer and sustainability activist Wendell Berry believed that life's meaning came from cultivating the land and building meaningful relationships with one another.

In a world that prizes self-interest, is compassion a weakness? In 1992 the Dalai Lama asked a psychologist, instead of focusing only on negative emotions, why don't we study happiness and compassion? Now, the psychology of compassion has become an established field, and a place for rich conversation between science and religion. 

When you imagine an Australian Buddhist, who do you think of? Buddhism in this country has a multicultural history which reaches back before federation and the White Australia Policy. 

Yale professors Christian Wiman and Miroslav Volf have been friends for years, through serious ups and downs. Together they discuss poetry, suffering and the divine — helping one another express the big things we encounter throughout our lives.

Guests

Miroslav Volf is a theologian and the founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School. He has written or edited over twenty books, including his most recent co-authored book Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian. 

Christian Wiman is a poet and the Clement-Muehl Professor of Communication Arts at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He is also an author, editor, or translator of fourteen books, including his most recent co-authored book Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian.

Read an extract of Glimmerings on ABC Religion and Ethics: ‘Glimmerings are what the soul’s composed of’: Letters between a poet and a theologian - ABC Religion & Ethics

More from Soul Search

• The Zen masters of haiku - ABC listen
• Poetry that soars — from Rumi to Australia - ABC listen
• Big questions in books — Ancient Chinese poetry and the nature of existence - ABC listen

Vote now for your favourite Australian books of all time!

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/radionational/countdown/top100books

• Toby Davidson recommends Holocaust Island, by Graeme Dixon
• Emma Beattie recommends In Their Branches, by Gretchen Miller
• Steve Biddulph recommends Night Train to Varanasi, by Sean Doyle

The Australian landscape comes up again and again in Australian poetry — it's part of what makes poetry from this place so distinctive. So, how does the contemporary Australian poetry scene engage with the land, and how has it shaped the art and spirituality of Australian poets?

GuestsLaurie May is a poet, a spoken word performer and a poetry educator based in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, and the Executive Director of Red Dirt Poetry.

Laurie May’s poetry recommendations are:

• I am the Desert, by Marie Elena Ellis I Am The Desert by Marie Elena Ellis - Red Dirt Poetry
• Home Between the Cedar Trees, by Jihad Yassine Home Between the Cedar Trees by Jihad Yassine — Guest House Publishing
• Trials of Hope, by Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes Trials of Hope (የተስፋ ፈተና) - Fremantle Press
• A Savage Turn, by Luke Patterson Luke Patterson debut poetry collection is utterly lawless - ABC listen
• The Harbour, by Dimitris Tsaloumas The poetry of Dimitris Tsaloumas - ABC listen

Laurie’s Top100 Books recommendations are:

• Seven Little Australians, by Ethel Turner
• Looking for Alibrandi, by Melina Marchetta
• Trials of Hope, by Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes

Mark Tredennick OAM is an Australian poet and essayist based outside of Bowral in New South Wales. He has received the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Blake Poetry Prize, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Calibre Essay Prize and the Wildcare Nature Writing Prize. You can read a selection of his poems and essays on his website.

Mark Tredennick’s Top 100 book recommendation is Creekwater Journal, by Robert Gray (1974)

More from Soul Search

• The Zen masters of haiku - ABC listen
• Poetry that soars — from Rumi to Australia - ABC listen
• Big questions in books — Ancient Chinese poetry and the nature of existence - ABC listen

Vote now for your favourite Australian books of all time!

Haiku poetry is both simple and evocative, largely due to Zen Buddhism. The now familiar 5-7-5 haiku verse developed in ancient Japan, and now, across language and culture, haiku remains a popular way for people to engaging with nature, the seasons, and the fleeting moments of life.

Poetry is one of the world's most enduring artforms. It predates writing, and we’re still compelled to express our deepest thoughts through verse. What does poetry have to do with spirituality and the sacred — whether its big, mystical experiences, or the small moments that nonetheless ring with truth?

Dr Toby Davidson is a poet and Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at Macquarie University. He is the author of Christian Mysticism and Australian Poetry, and editor of the Collected Poems of Francis Webb. His third collection of poems is called The Grand Reopening.

• Hear Francis Webb read from his Collected Poems
• The 2026 Francis Webb poetry reading Tickets, Saturday 29 August  •  2 PM - 4 PM | Eventbrite
• Toby Davidson in The Conversation: Australian poetry classics: Francis Webb, the 20th century’s ‘most unjustly neglected poet’, is our best kept literary secret

Dr Milad Milani is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Western Sydney University and co-founder of the Sufi Studies Network at Monash University. 

More from Soul Search 

• Rumi, Hafez and Sufi poetry in surprising places – ABC Listen
• Spiritual Classics: Rumi – ABC Listen
• The joy and anguish of the Psalms – ABC Listen
• Zeus' Law — Hospitality in Homer's Odyssey – ABC Listen

More from ABC Radio National

Submit your own poem to the Middle of the Air poetry competition, partnering with Red Room Poetry.

Underneath all the sex and violence of Homer's Odyssey, hospitality shines as a key theme. So, what does "Zeus' Law", outlining the responsibilities of hosts towards guests and strangers, have to teach us today, as our own society debates difference?

GuestsDr Susan Lupack is an archaeologist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the Macquarie University. She is co-editor the new Cambridge Guide to Homer.

Dr Ben Brown is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney 

More from Soul Search

• Gods: from Ancient Greece to the Antipodes - ABC listen
• The ancients on life, death and the cosmos, with John Behr - ABC listen

More from the ABC

• Odysseus gets lost in translation: What separates Homer’s epic from Nolan’s blockbuster? - ABC Religion & Ethics
• Is Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey conservative, woke, or something else entirely? - ABC listen

Some people love crisp winter mornings and bracing ocean swims — one of those people is author Katherine May, who says there are winter periods in life too. In her book Wintering, Katherine writes about her own cold and fallow seasons, and says we shouldn't run from our winters because they contain seeds of transformation.

Guest

Katherine May is an internationally renowned writer and podcaster based in Kent, in the south east of England. Her work covers nature, spirituality, slow living and neurodivergence. Her bestselling books include Wintering: the power of rest and retreat in difficult times and Enchantment: Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age.

Katherine is on Instagram and Substack. Her podcast is called The Clearing.

More from Soul Search

• Joy and stillness under stress - ABC listen
• An Unorthodox Idea — Rest is Resistance - ABC listen

More from the ABC

• The History of Emotion: Were feelings always felt this way? - ABC listen