I find it compelling when someone is passionate about something – especially when they’re passionate about something that isn’t, you know, obvious. It’s not something they can monetize, it’s not something everyone else is talking about... it’s something that they’re bringing focused insight to in a way you would otherwise never think about. A few years ago I learned that Graham Henderson – previously a lawyer and music industry advocate – was really into Percy Bysshe Shelley, the romantic poet who died two hundred years ago this past July. And he’s passionate about surfacing aspects of Shelley’s art and politics in a way that is accessible and relevant to contemporary readers. We talk about poets as legislators of the world, the difficult conversations sons sometimes have with their fathers through art, what great art asks us to do, but mostly we talk about Shelley - the radical poet of empathy.

You can read Graham's work on Shelley at http://www.grahamhenderson.ca/