author, poet, teacher, and performer
From and about The Kural: Tiruvalluvar's Tirukkural.
Here is an excerpt from my course on the Kural, Taller Than a Mountain. It explores verse 400 on sacred unperishing prosperity.
I’m excited to announce that Taller Than A Mountain 2024 starts April 27, with a free intro class on April 13.
The course is being offered at a price that you set yourself as a way to practice one of the Kural’s key teachings: honoring what fits each person, place, and situation.
I’m very excited to announce my upcoming online course on the Kural, Taller Than A Mountain.
It starts April 27, with a free intro class on April 13.
Among my guest teachers I’m honored to include Andrew Harvey, Bob Thurman, and Perumal Murugan.
The course is being offered at a price that you set yourself as a way to practice one of the Kural’s key teachings: honoring what fits each person, place, and situation.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll answer this question from a few different angles.
One of the groups it’s most definitely for are people who want to enjoy and learn from the poetry of a great teacher such as Tiruvalluvar but who sometimes find poetry intimidating, complicated, or just plain confusing.
For instance, I was having coffee the other day with a friend, and he said to me:
“I’ve been reading the Kural, and enjoying it, too. But while there are some verses that make so much sense to me immediately, there are others that I’m not sure what to make of. I never felt comfortable with poetry in school, but I know it’s something that people sometimes find deeply meaningful. I’d love to be able to see that for myself.”
As I said to my friend, not only is the course for people who are uncertain about poetry, I myself was like that for a very long time.
That’s why I’m all the more excited to share some of things that have helped me personally to experience poetry with greater ease, understanding, and delight.
If this sounds at all intriguing, please do take a peek!
I was honored and delighted to speak in Toronto for the annual awards ceremony of the Tamil Literary Garden. Paavannan and L. Murugapoopathy received lifetime achievement awards, and we also celebrated the work of Velmurugan Elango, Samraj, Sukirtharani, Sivasankari, and V. N. Giritharan.
Here are a few pictures! Click on the images to see them at full size.
I’m deeply honored to be participating in the 11th World Tamil Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on July 21-23, 2023, in which I’ll be speaking about my English translation of the Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural.
Watch on YouTube and turn on the captions for an English translation of this greeting in Tamil.
I invite you to learn more about my translation of the Kural as well as my translation of Avvaiyar, issued in a second edition in 2022 by Red Hen Press.
I was delighted to write about verse 108 from the Kural in the wonderful online magazine The Porch: A Slow Conversation about Beautiful and Difficult Things.
You can read the essay here:
You can also listen to verse 108 here:
From chapter 11, “Gratitude.”
Translated from the Tamil by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
THE KURAL: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural
Beacon Press, Boston
