Sarah Wider

Long a valued friend of the Ikeda Center, Dr. Wider is Professor of English, Emeritus at Colgate University, and is co-author, with Daisaku Ikeda, of The Art of True Relations: Conversations on the Poetic Heart of Human Possibility. She brings this hopeful spirit to all her activities at the Center, which are diverse. She has spoken at five Ikeda Forums: the 2005 forum on Whitman, the 2006 forum on Emerson, the 2007 forum on “Women and the Power of Friendship,” the 2010 forum on the democratic spirit, and the 2023 forum on the power of literature. In 2014, she spoke at the book launch for True Relations, exploring the poetic mind as well as the poetry of Joy Harjo. At that time she sat down for an extended video interview with Center. In 2015 she contributed a chapter to Encountering the Poems of Daisaku Ikeda called “Daisaku Ikeda’s Poetry of Encouragement.” Finally, in 2020, she was panelist for the virtual event “The Poetic Spirit: Our Power to Reconnect a Divided World.” In her Preface to True Relations, Dr. Wider offered us a glimpse into how she approaches things:

“Pursuing questions that address the human capacity for wonder, we let our minds wander among all places and times, inviting our readers to undertake their own journeys as well. What might the women of the American Transcendentalist movement teach us about how we attend to the mind’s workings? How do Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and work continue to challenge our ways of seeing? What are our responsibilities to where we are? What are the powers of poetry, and why have we neglected them?

“Thought opens to thought. Every observation is just waiting to be shared and explored. Throughout the process, what grew in clarity was the collaborative nature of thought.”

Photo: Marilyn Humphries