Buy this book at Amazon.co.uk
To Past Reviews Index
Back to Last Page
Title/Author

The Way of Awen:
Journey of a Bard

Kevan Manwaring

Average Review Rating Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)
Book Details

Publisher : O Books

Published : 2010

Copyright : Kevan Manwaring 2010

ISBN-10 : PB 1-84694-311-6
ISBN-13 : PB 978-1-84694-311-9

Publisher's Write-Up

Awaken the bard within in this inspiring journey into your creative potential. Expanding upon the foundation of The Bardic Handbook, this volume explores the transformations the bardic initiate must go through to become a fully-fledged Bard. This originally took 12 years of study in the Bardic Colleges - but communities need bards right now, bringing healing and hope with their words and music and so the training process is accelerated over 12 months, echoing the 12 years of Taliesin's journey from Gwion Bach to the Shining Brow. Extracts from the author's notebooks and journals over 20 years illustrate his own journey - showing how this ancient wisdom has been gleaned and validated by powerful personal experience. "The Way of Awen" is a way of living creatively.

Column Ends

space

Reader Reviews

Why not Submit a Review your own Review for this book?

Review by Geoff Ward (090111) Rating (8/10)

Review by Geoff Ward
Rating 8/10
Despite thousands of years of adaptation, the archetypal muse of ancient Greek myth remains just as diverse, mysterious and eternally diffuse. But isn't this exactly as it should be?

While the source and nature of inspiration, whether leading to artistic or scientific genesis, may still puzzle us, the 21st-century quantum world-view, revealing the participatory structure of all energy fields, including that of our own consciousness, provides us with a new paradigm for creativity.

As Kevan Manwaring says, in one description, the 'way of awen' - 'awen' being the Welsh word for poetic inspiration - is 'joining in the dance of creation', but following your own muse rather than the crowd.

Could there be any better basis for the flow of inspiration into the human imagination than the quantum realm, which is quite magical in its unpredictability and indeterminacy. To be inspired is surely to connect with that divine, potent, cosmic energy, replete with potential and creativity, that surrounds all of us.

Historically, the notion of transcendence has been present in the description of awen as the divine inspiration of bards in the druidic tradition. And this latest work from Kevan, a novelist, poet, storyteller and teacher, and a former Bard of the city of Bath, is all about living life creatively along this venerable path.

Few writers have done more than Kevan over the years to inspire people to unlock their creative potential. Building on the foundation of his The Bardic Handbook (2006), he now explores the journey the bardic initiate must undertake.

This training took 12 years in the ancient bardic colleges, but here the course is telescoped into 12 months, or lunar cycles, using the legend of Welsh bard Taliesin as a touchstone for the stages of development towards self-actualisation.

The second part of The Way of Awen comprises insightful and often-revealing extracts from Kevan's journals and notebooks, detailing some of the highways and byways of his own bardic journey over two decades. Thus, unlike The Bardic Handbook, this new book is not a manual but a personal, intuitive account based on the authenticity of Kevan's own experience and 'response to the awen'.

More bards are needed to bring healing and hope to the world with their words and music, he says, so the training process needs to be speeded up. 'In an age of climate change, peak oil and geopolitical tensions we need validated bards working in communities now, not in several years time,' he says. 'Tomorrow may be too late.'
Geoff Ward (9th January 2011)

Back to Top of Page
Column Ends

space