IN association with Bookstop in Tavistock, Calstock Arts presents poet and healer Jay Ramsay this Sunday afternoon (October 23).

This is one of the series of ‘Sunday Sessions’.

Jay is an internationally recognized poet and author of over 30 books. His work aims to bring more spiritual conscious-ness into contemporary British poetry, both on the page and in performance.

He has edited a number of anthologies, one of which is Diamond Cutters. The well-known journalist and broadcaster, Bel Mooney, said: ‘Diamond Cutters is by my bed and I am gaining much from it.’

The anthology was created by Jay and Andrew Harvey.

Jay himself describes the book as dealing with ‘the tradition of visionary poetry from the early 20th century with Kathleen Raine and David Gascoyne through to contemporary poets in the early 21st, at a time when spiritual consciousness is more important for us than ever; not simply as an inward or private language, but as a way of actively seeing and reading what is going on in our world today at a time of critical personal and political transition.’

He said: ‘It takes poetry beyond social realism towards the source which is both our origin and transformation as human beings. At the same time, it is deeply political and ecological, critiquing the restrictive ideologies that limit our minds, our freedom, and our compassion.’

Drawn from an early age to psychology, Jay has created a unique synthesis between poetry and personal development. He is a practising psycho-therapist and healer based in Gloucestershire.

For Jay, poetry, psychology and healing are all part of ‘one work’ for which he coined the phrase ‘the artist-healer’ as a new configuration. His belief is that the requirements of our time take us beyond mere aestheticism on the one hand, and clinical prosaic clichés on the other.