About Dinnseanchas & Jason Kirkey

Dinnseanchas — Education for Ecos and Psyche is an organization dedicated to the teaching of ecological wisdom. The Irish word dinnseanchas (pronounced din-shawn-uh-khus) refers to a tradition of place-name stories. The dinnseanchas are the memory of the land, a weaving which transforms location into place, a soulful and sacred landscape. Dinnseanchas is the teaching vehicle of poet and writer Jason Kirkey, offering programs aimed at the relationship between humans and the wild, which is found both in nature (ecos) and the soul (psyche). Many of the programs offered are deeply embedded in the Irish dreamtime, finding their source in the legacy of myth and storytelling which survives today. Although Dinnseanchas could fairly be categorized as a Celtic wisdom based teaching organization, it finds equal inspiration in the fields of ecopsychology, deep ecology, depth psychology, and the Shambhala warriorship teachings of Chögyam Trungpa.  Dinnseanchas programs are opportunities for participants to have authentic encounters with nature and soul, gateways to an experience of being initiated into the place in the cosmos we each were born to inhabit.

Jason Kirkey grew up in the North Atlantic watershed of Massachusetts in a small town north of Boston.  At the age of twelve he began his long apprenticeship to the earth and soul.  He moved to Boulder, Colorado where he attended Naropa University and in 2007 obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in “Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Contemplative Psychology and Environmental Studies.”  His thesis work focused on healing the human-nature relationship in the Irish druidic tradition, in preparation for which he took several trips to Ireland between 2004 and 2006, and studied for a semester in Dingle, Co. Kerry at the Díseart Institute of Education and Celtic Culture.  Throughout his undergraduate career he was also heavily influenced and inspired by deep ecology, ecopsychology, Buddhism, and the Shambhala tradition of enlightened warriorship as taught by Chögyam Trungpa.

In November 2006 Jason formed Hiraeth Press as a vehicle for the publication of his poetry.  He has since released three collections of poems, Portraits of Beauty (2006), Songs from a Wild Place (2007), and The Ballad of the Sea-Sweet Moon and Other Poems (2008).  In 2008 the Press worked with the Ecos Systems Institute to put our Courting the Wild: Love Affairs with the Land to which Jason also contributed an essay.

In late 2008 Jason completed a manuscript entitled The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality which deals with the themes of Irish mythology and the re-invention and integration of the human species into consonance with the living cosmos.  It draws heavily on ecological studies, mythology and folklore, and the nondual mystical traditions.  It is to be published in November 2009 through Hiraeth Press.

Most recently Jason has moved to San Francisco to study at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the “Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness” program.  He is in the early stages of writing a fourth collection of poems and is developing experiential programs in order to bring his work with Place, Nature, Soul, and Story to the public.