Living in a world mired by chaos, how can we cultivate greater peace and awareness in our personal attempt to contribute positively to the world?

In this session, poets and editors Ow Yeong Wai Kit and Muzakkir Samat discuss how poetry can offer intriguing insights about our interconnectedness with the world and nature. By sharing a few of their favourite verses and writings—from John Muir, Jane Hirshfield, Rumi, Basho, Han Shan and more—they contextualise how some of the best writings today are suffused with the light of mindfulness practice.

Wai Kit will also be conducting a secular mindfulness practice session based on his experience as an educator, as well as his personal practice under teachers like His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

About the poets

Ow Yeong Wai Kit has edited poetry anthologies such as From Walden to Woodlands (2015) and Love at the Gallery (2017). His essays, poems, and writings have appeared in the Interfaith Observer, Eastern Horizon, Think Pieces, Straits Times, TODAY, Malay Mail, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and elsewhere. Currently a teacher and writer, he has an MA in English Literature from University College London. He is also an interfaith harmony advocate in the Holland-Bukit Timah Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circle.

Muzakkir Samat was trained as a Civil Engineer at NUS. Born and bred in Yishun—home of the Yishun Dam and Yishun Park—Muzakkir has been a big fan of green spaces, wide landscapes and rising suns. He volunteers regularly with FiTree, a Muslim youth environmentalist group, advocating a greener lifestyle for the Muslim masses. Considering the likes of John Muir and Ralph Waldo Emerson as his heroes, Muzakkir would love to walk the path of enlightenment through nature. He believes that the relationship between reading nature and reading poetry is an intersection worth exploring.