Poetry Unbound

This episode isn’t about poetry but about another kind of art: the art of conflict resolution. In a deeply practical conversation, Pádraig Ó Tuama sits down with Columbia University’s Peter Coleman, author of The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization and an expert in constructive conflict. Coleman shares advice for “the exhausted middle majority” — the large number of Americans fed up with our divided politics — on how to engage with others in ways that lead to openness and learning. He also talks about the surprising power of taking a walk with your challenger, the limitations of bringing together people from both sides, and the three factors that matter most when handling conflict. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“Politics by themselves are necessary but not sufficient … [and] poetry by itself is necessary but not sufficient. We must find a way to bring them together,” says Martín Espada, a poet and professor. With crystalline language, an all-seeing gaze, and innate musicality, he writes poems that show us the world and people as they are — sometimes violent, vicious, unjust, but also tender, tenacious, courageous. In this potent conversation recorded for the 2026 Greenbelt Festival in Kettering, England, he reads from his work, and he and Pádraig Ó Tuama discuss the resistance he’s met when mixing politics and poetry, his parents as influences and teachers, and how his writing (and editing) have changed over time. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

After actor, dialect coach, and teacher Amanda Quaid was diagnosed with a serious illness in 2021, she responded by trying something new — she wrote poetry. She says, “I was looking for an art form that allowed me to be with uncertainty in a beautiful way.” The result is a captivating memoir-in-poetry, No Obvious Distress, that uses words and phrases from her medical charts to create verse that rings with laughter, tears, and truth. In this conversation recorded at New York City’s Morgan Library & Museum, Amanda reads from her book, and she and Pádraig Ó Tuama talk about the three principles that guided her through illness, her parenting a young child through this time, and her work with medical students, actors, and CEOs. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Poet, translator, and musician Haleh Liza Gafori describes the revered 13th-century Persian poet Rumi as “a good pal to humanity”. As she puts it, “He's rooting for our liberation.” In this exuberant conversation recorded for the 2025 Greenbelt Festival, she reads some of her translations, and she and Pádraig Ó Tuama illuminate the life of the man known as Rumi — his intense love of all things earthly and divine, the Islamic faith and universalist vision that flow through his work, and his life-changing connection with Shams, a Sufi mystic who catalyzed Rumi’s transformation from preacher to poet. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“For me, if a poem doesn't swing, it's really not much of a poem,” says Adrian Matejka, author of the collection Be Easy: New and Selected Poems. His work hums with music, from its references to David Bowie, Miles Davis, and others to its infectious rhythms, repetitions, and rhymes. In this lively conversation recorded in 2024 at the Wick Poetry Center in Ohio, he reads several poems, and he and Pádraig Ó Tuama talk about “the imaginary discotheque” that takes place in Adrian’s head when he writes, how metaphor and simile offer a third space for his ideas to reach people, and his intense interest in exploring “masculinities” in all their expressions and emotions. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

After listening to this exuberant interview, you’ll retire the phrase “lost in translation” from your vocabulary. Instead, writer and scholar Karen Leeder believes poetry can expand when translated, reaching new audiences and gaining new layers of meaning. Karen joins Pádraig Ó Tuama in an interview recorded in 2025 after she and Durs Grünbein were co-awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for her translation of Psyche Running, which Durs wrote. In addition to reading from her work, she explains what it’s like to translate a poet who is very much alive and why she thinks translation can help “explode” insularity and xenophobia. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“Poetry means paying attention in a different way to the world and seeing what wisdom you're given back in return for that attention,” says Richard Scott in this conversation with Pádraig Ó Tuama, recorded during the 2025 Collective Trauma Summit. Richard’s second collection, That Broke Into Shining Crystals, features sequences that focus on two hypnotically compelling subjects: still-life paintings and crystals. From them, he’s created poems that thrum with music, memory, harm, and healing. Richard reads from his book, and he and Pádraig discuss the “surprising life” to be found in still lifes, the difference between the speaker vs. the poet, and how crystals — the beautiful result of “unimaginable” pressure and breakage — can offer us a way to think about trauma. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“It had to involve more than just a slim volume of verse,” says Kimberly Campanello about MOTHERBABYHOME, her ongoing visual poetry project which centers the 796 infants and children who died at the St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, in the west of Ireland, between 1926 and 1961. So it consists of 796 sheets of vellum with text from archival and contemporary sources that she’s shaped into a work that blends documentation and lamentation, reportage and rite. In this Zoom conversation between Kimberly and Pádraig Ó Tuama — part two of two — recorded in 2025, Kimberly reads an excerpt from MOTHERBABYHOME, and then she and Pádraig discuss whether all poets want to be priests and how poetry is the ultimate DIY activity. Or, as Kimberly puts it, “You don't have to learn an instrument to be a poet.” We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“It's about seeing, through reading, whether where you are going has been or is now or will be written, or not.” This deliciously twisty line is from Kimberly Campanello’s ongoing versioning of Dante’s Inferno, and as in that sentence, she is translating and reconfiguring the 700-year-old work of poetry to reflect her life, her family’s lives, your life, our life, and, indeed, our lives today. We are delighted to bring you this exhilarating conversation — part one of two — between Kimberly and Pádraig Ó Tuama that was recorded over Zoom in 2025. In addition to reading excerpts from her redone Dante, she and Pádraig talk about the English teacher who made an indelible impression on her, the roles of love and time in the Inferno, and how an early-onset Parkinson’s diagnosis has shaped her thinking and writing. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“Poetry should be horrifying,” says Rachel Mann. “It should be … on the edge of the edge of what could be said.” We are delighted to bring you this vibrant conversation featuring Rachel and Yomi Ṣode speaking with Pádraig Ó Tuama at the 2024 StAnza Poetry Festival in Scotland. Rachel and Yomi each read poems, and then go on to discuss grace, who receives it, and who deserves it; the place of grief and remembrance in their work; and how writing about historical figures is a way to disrupt and re-vision both the past and the present. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

From a young age, says Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah, “I had such a fascination with the way the alphabet makes music in the mind.” We are thrilled to offer this thoughtful conversation between Pádraig and Fady, recorded when Fady received the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize. Fady reads several poems — including two with the same name! — and speaks of how memory, time, history, faith, love, violence, and difference figure in his work. He says, “Ultimately for my existence as a Palestinian in the 20th or 21st century … I am also always, particularly in English, bridging a gap.” We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“I still have the best three-point shot of any Canadian poet born before 1943” is one of the first things that acclaimed poet Don McKay says in this expansive and intimate exchange. We are thrilled to offer this conversation between Padraig and Don, recorded from a virtual interview held on the occasion of Don receiving the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Poetry Prizes. After touching on his early devotion to basketball, Don speaks of his lifelong passion for geology and birds, how Newfoundland is considered “opera for geologists”, and why he favors membership over mastery when it comes to relating to Earth’s other living creatures. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama shares “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, a favorite childhood poem of his, and offers an audio postscript to Season 10 of Poetry Unbound. Later in 2026, he will bring us more Poetry Unbound to look forward to — find out what and when here. In the meantime, you can listen to past episodes of Poetry Unbound or to new episodes of On Being with Krista Tippett, out now. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Have you ever watched, in awe, as a skilled gymnast or skater lifts off and completes a dizzying number of revolutions in less than a second before landing safely back down? That’s how you may feel upon reading the great Leonard Cohen’s urgent, dreamlike poem “I, 8” from Book of Mercy. In his telling of a man’s fall “from his high place” into “disgrace”, Cohen sends us on a short, 206-word journey that seamlessly weaves together narration, fiction, meditation, devotion, and prayer. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Will you leave this episode feeling uplifted, envious, curious, or something else entirely? Yes. Billy-Ray Belcourt’s poem “Subarctica” transports you to a vividly specific time — “the coldest December / on record, I haven’t left my mother’s / house in over a week” — where the primary view is of poplars in “a tiny schoolyard”. Amid the simplicity and snow, the speaker shifts their perspective, seeing beyond their past and towards the wonder in their present and in what is to come. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Ruth Irupé Sanabria’s delicious and dexterous “Carne” begins with these lines: “I've eaten pork from / pernil to chuletas to chitterlings.” And just in case you were wondering — and even if you’re not — the speaker goes on to list much more of the seafood, poultry, and animal parts that have been consumed and how they were cooked. Lest you think this poem is simply a meat-eater’s manifesto, savor its final turn towards what else the speaker is really hungry for. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Loving in the face of violence, danger, and distress is an act of defiance, as demonstrated in Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s achingly beautiful poem “Dukka”. The Palestinian American writer spotlights seven aspects of love in action — between father and newborn, for example, a journalist and her audience, a pair of intimates dining out. She shows us the “million ways to love” flowing through her community and cascading through generations, centuries, millennia, as inexorable and constant as the ocean and as bright and surprising as a rare meteor shower. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Rachel Mann’s “#TDOR” manages to turn a depiction of one side of a conversation about marking Trans Day of Remembrance into a poem that is both empathic and uncompromising. Mann captures the verbal stammers and stumbles of the well-meaning but leaves us to reckon whether the words land as mirror, mockery, or cry for action. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Sanah Ahsan’s evocative “Ramadan’s Greeting” brings us into the thoughts and experiences of a person observing the holiest month in Islam. In nine brief couplets, the poet deftly directs our attention towards some of the rich contrasts that emerge at this time — between light and dark, desire and abstinence, self and community — as well as the abiding satisfactions and joys. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“O come, in any way you want” is the first line in Kevin Hart’s marvelous, mystical “Prayer”. So come to this poem — whether for its deliciously sensual language (“bouts of rain”, “wind that wraps”, “raw and ragged smells / [o]f gumleaves”, and more), its air of mystery, or its unabashed aching for a “you” — and then linger for a while. Stay with it, or let it stay with you, and see what emerges. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Too many of us left high school thinking that a poem could be taken seriously only if it was difficult to understand, subdued in its use of rhyme and alliteration, and addressed lofty topics. Harryette Mullen’s saucy, suggestive “LVTOFU” bulldozes through convention, all the while revelling in its own rhythms, references, and humor. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

What is there to say or do when the life of a loved one has been upended and devastated? Stewart Henderson’s poem “How To Speak Love In A Storm?” offers a tender masterclass in how you can accompany someone — or even just yourself — through a time of tumult and pain. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Dante Micheaux’s rich and rollicking poem “Theologies for Korah” is written on the occasion of an infant’s baptism, but it’s anything but baby talk or bland instruction. Religious figures, rites, and symbols are proffered, not as liturgy or lore to be swallowed whole, eyes shut, but as people, stories, and ideas that cry out to be seen, played with, and engaged with.  We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“How could there be a war in this city?” is the plaintive question that starts Oksana Makysymchuk’s “Arguments for Peace”. Like ours, the world of her poem holds both the “goodness of the universe” and “a foreign leader / warning of invasion”. She offers no pat answers for what to do in the face of conflict — just a dizzying sense of disbelief and the deep desire to hold tight to the people and life around us. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

In Armen Davoudian’s casually intimate poem “Coming Out of the Shower”, mother and son perform their morning routines in the small, shared space of their household’s only bathroom. She chats and puts on her makeup, while he showers and uses her shampoo and robe — oh what rhythm, affection, and ease are to be seen in this dance they both know so well. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Some religions and some people have very specific ideas about “grace”, and that includes poet Orlando Ricardo Menes. In the carefully constructed “Grace”, he manages to both demystify and remystify what grace is, leaving us with the possibility that at any moment or no moment it could pour down and quench us all. Intrigued? Confused? Give this episode a listen. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

In fewer than two dozen lines, Cyrus Cassells’s poem “Jasmine” offers readers a multisensory, cinematic immersion into late spring life in Rome. Not only is the “sweet, steady broadcast” of jasmine ever-present amid “the joyous braiding of sun and rain”, but there’s also Daria, a “crone-glorious” neighbor, with a story about her romance with the gallant Galliano. It’s la dolce vita, without overindulgence or artifice. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

W.S. Merwin’s “For The Anniversary of My Death” is a slim, precise poem — just 13 lines made up of 84 words — about the very weightiest of subjects, one’s future death. With it, Merwin has crafted an elegant vessel, a small and sturdy container to hold some of life’s big questions, uncertainties, and feelings. Are you ready to gaze at it, grasp it, sit with it? And as you contemplate death, he gently reminds, remain here — where there’s rain, birdsong, and life right in front of you.

Words can’t quite fully capture the activity, oddity, and awe that is everywhere around us, but poet Kimberly Blaeser makes a gorgeous attempt in her poem “my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers.” The three stanzas overflow with an exuberance of colorful creatures — from checked loons and flitting mayflies to a “blissful beaver” and a “red squirrel swimming (yes! swimming)” — and with love — love of the natural world, of looking, of language, of the language of looking, and of being present for such everyday wonders. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Marie Howe’s poetry shimmers with the keen attention she pays to language: the language of the body (both the human body and “the beautiful body of the world”), of people’s everyday speech, and of religious myth. We are thrilled to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Marie, recorded as an online component of the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2025. Marie reads several poems, and together, they discuss Mary Magdalene as complex everywoman, the “eternal energy” of dead loved ones that fills Marie’s life and work, and her current efforts to listen to what the Earth is saying to us. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

“Spending time in hell is not my idea of something that one should do,” says poet Lorna Goodison, yet she immersed herself there for years to create her extraordinary modern Jamaican translation of Dante’s Inferno. We are thrilled to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Lorna, recorded as an online component of the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2025. She reads from her work, and together, they discuss Lorna’s inspiration for her underworld undertaking, how she found her Virgil, and why she calls The Inferno “bitter, necessary medicine for now.” We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Have you ever gotten consumed by watching a couple argue in public and trying to decipher what’s really going on between them? Denise Duhamel’s deliciously entertaining “How It Will End” offers us that experience. Come for the voyeurism, stay for the awareness it stirs up. Why are we so captivated by other people’s disagreements? And how can what we notice about them teach us about ourselves?

Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, disaster, liberty — and it finds certainty only in the shaky universal ground of that ambivalence.

Benjamin Zephaniah’s urgent, imperative “To Michael Menson” was written when he was a poet in residence at a human rights barrister in England. His poem resonates with his repeated calls for justice for a murdered Black musician — not a justice that is gullible, impotent, or hopeless but one that is clear-eyed, collaborative, and mighty.

Carmen Giménez’s poem “Ars Poetica” is a stunning waterfall of words, a torrent of dozens of short statements that begin with “I” or “I’m.” As you listen to them, let an answering cascade of questions fill up your mind. What does this series of confessions reveal to you about poetry? The poet? And yourself?

Rick Barot’s poem “The Singing” takes place in the humdrum, relatable setting of the waiting room at a car dealership. But the unexpected occurs when one woman’s soft humming builds into strange, full-throated singing. Curiosity, wonder, anger, and dread spill over, forcing you to face the same dilemma as the narrator: What can you do when reality defies your control?

“You would’ve made a lousy nun.” The narrator of Diannely Antigua’s “Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me” overhears these words, and they jolt her into contrasting her life experience with the limited archetypes offered by her church — good daughter, good sister, holy woman, whore. Which of these has she been? Where does her devotion lie? And what virtue can she claim?

Don McKay’s poem “Neanderthal Dig” begins with the discovery of an ancient, child-sized skeleton placed on the wing of a swan and then takes flight, showing us how love and death are riddled with paradoxes — mixing the earthbound and the sacred, the personal and the universal, the time-stamped and the never ending.

When dictatorial leaders use talk of peace as a smokescreen to conceal their plans for war and destruction, what are the people to do? Believe in a vision of peace and freedom that is muscular, sturdy, and protective — and pray that it holds, as Ernesto Cardenal does in his poem “Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5),” translated by Jonathan Cohen.

Many people say their experience of time changes after they have children, a phenomenon that Diego Báez captures in “Inheritance.” In this poem, a past, present, and future starring the same child shift ceaselessly in a parent’s mind, like photos flipped through in an album, dots placed on a timeline, moments that one wishes they could build monuments for.

Wonder and strangeness commingle with the commonplace and universal in Danielle Chapman’s “Trespassing with Tweens.” In a not-quite mirroring, a human mother and her children stand and watch together in awe as a great blue heron flaps in and feeds its two offspring. The pleasures found here are profound and multiple – the joys in seeing, in sharing an experience of seeing, in seeing with fresh eyes, and in being seen.

In Richard Langston’s poem “Hill walk,” he proffers a handful of things that move us over the course of a day — words said or read, notes played, the sight of halting steps taken by a sibling. We marvel at the sound of an unfamiliar bird call, but there’s a startling mystery to the human heart and what it responds to (or doesn’t) and one that we don’t always mark.

What sacrifices were made by your parents when you were a child? How did you think about them as they were happening? And how do you think about them now? In his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden holds space for a weighted childhood memory and the regret, love, and pain it evokes.

When you look at people who are younger than you — particularly teenagers — does your mind ever take you back to yourself at their age? Taylor Johnson’s poem “Pennsylvania Ave. SE” performs this feat of time travel, going from a glimpse of two boys on bicycles to a haunting sense memory of what was once so yearned for: to be seen, to be wanted, to be free.

In Kinsale Drake’s poem “Put on that KTNN,” she writes about driving to a hometown as a familiar station crackles to life on the car radio. From this corner of America, she creates her own country music — of Navajo voices alongside Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, of drumbeats and guitar licks, of things wrought by nature and things made by humans, all of them rooted in the desert sand.

Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama is back on Monday, December 2. Featured poets in this season include Robert Hayden, Kinsale Drake, Danielle Chapman, Diannely Antigua, and many more. New episodes every week through March 3. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.

In this concluding episode of "Poems as Teachers," our special miniseries on conflict and the human condition, host Pádraig Ó Tuama says the poems discussed in this offering are a different kind of teacher: “not as teachers that give us rules to follow — more so teachers that share something of their own intuition.” And for a final reflection, he offers Kai Cheng Thom’s “trauma is not sacred,” which speaks directly, fiercely, and lovingly to the pain, scars, and violence that we humans carry and inflict upon one another.

Being right may feel good, but what human price do we pay for this feeling of rightness? Yehuda Amichai’s poem “The Place Where We Are Right,” translated by Stephen Mitchell, asks us to answer this question, consider how doubt and love might expand and enrich our perspective, and reflect upon the buried and not-so-buried ruins of past conflicts, arguments, and wounds that still call for our attention.

In “Hebrews 13” by Jericho Brown, a narrator says: “my lover and my brother both knocked at my door.” The heat is turned on, scalding coffee is offered and hastily swallowed, and silence is the soundtrack. What an exquisitely awkward triangle it is, and what a human, beautiful, and loving shape that can be.

In Mosab Abu Toha’s “Ibrahim Abu Lughod and brother in Yaffa,” two barefoot siblings on a beach sketch out a map of their former home in the sand and argue about what went where. Their longing for return to a place of hospitality, family, memory, friends, and even strangers is alive and tender to the touch.

We ask questions to find out the facts, but what if you can’t trust the answers, the questions, or the person who's asking the questions? In Constantine P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” translated by Evan Jones, leaders exercise a sinister kind of violence — they’ve taken over people’s imaginations with showy displays of wealth and privilege, time-wasting ceremony, and fear coursing beneath it all.

As appealing as it may sound, is it really possible to live in a world completely free of conflict? No. And since differences and disagreements are inevitable and natural, Joy Harjo gives ground rules in “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.” Her call to us echoes across time and space — a call to listen, to humility, to justice, and to recognizing the land, the living, the dead, the not-yet-living.

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama gives an overview of this Poetry Unbound mini season that's devoted to poems with wisdom to offer about conflict and humanity. He also brings us Wisława Szymborska’s “A Word on Statistics,” translated by Joanna Trzeciak, which covers statistics of the most human kind — like the number of people in a group of 100 who think they know better, who can admire without envy, or who could do terrible things. Listen, and ask yourself: Which categories do I belong to? Which do I believe?

If your home were a museum — and they all are, in a way — what would the contents of your refrigerator say about you and those you live with? In his poem “Refrigerator, 1957,” Thomas Lux opens the door to his childhood appliance and oh, does a three-quarters full jar of maraschino cherries speak volumes.

The word “flush” is a verb, as in an activity that we do umpteen times a day. It’s also an adjective that conveys abundance. Fittingly, Rita Wong’s poem “flush” offers a praise song to water’s expansive and unceasing presence in our lives — from our toilets to our teacups, from inside our bodies to outside our buildings, and from our soil to our skies.

Bro — this is definitely not the “Beowulf” that you read back in school. Maria Dahvana Headley’s gutsy, swaggering translation brings the Old English epic poem roaring into this century, showing you why this tale of fraught family ties, power plays and posturing, and mighty, imperfect people is as relevant as ever.

A horse race from the 1980s may not seem like the obvious inspiration for a poem that celebrates so many of the things that make our lives worth living — good company (human and animal), good books, good food, and honest work — and that is just part of the surprise, delight, and surging joy of Michael Klein’s “Swale.”

What holds our bodies together? Yes, there are the biological components, such as the cells, fluids, fibers, but what about the bone-deep stuff, the histories, myths, aches, resolves? In “Our Bird Aegis,” poet Ray Young Bear evokes an adolescent eagle to show how this blend of the visceral, the inherited, and the self-made abides in each of us, no matter our form, wherever we go.

While disputes over contested lands result in damage that can be seen and documented, they also create countless unseen ruptures in the hearts, minds and souls of the humans caught in the chaos. By giving voice to yearning, Suji Kwock Kim’s poem “Search Engine: Notes from the North Korean-Chinese-Russian Border” shows how bearing witness and asking the impossible are acts of profound courage, creativity, and defiance.

In “ROLL CALL: NEW TAROT NAMES FOR BLACK GIRLS,” Amber McBride treats us to a playful litany of language that twists and leaps and never stumbles. Flavored with old-time Christianity, old-time hoodoo, and a modern alchemy all her own, it talks back to prejudice, reclaims the words meant to take people down, and forges new identities that shimmer with strength and strangeness.

A fragile and wondrous technology that we all possess, the human breath powers any number of things in our lives — speeches, feats of music, athleticism, and more. Carl Dennis’s powerful and meditative poem “Breath” calls on us to take a moment, give our breath our full attention, and celebrate it.

Our lives are filled with distances, the physical spans that we travel but also the stranger, vaster expanses between our past and our present or between feeling anchored and connected and feeling terribly alone. A poem can capture all of those in a way that a map can’t, as Elisa Gonzalez superbly demonstrates in “To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self.”

Most of us do our eavesdropping shyly and secretively, but Ofelia Zepeda’s poem “Deer Dance Exhibition” welcomes us to listen in on an exchange between people as they watch a ceremonial dance. Along the way, we get the sense that what we’re witnessing is more than a conversation — it’s the sounds and sensations of life itself.

Even in the most uneventful of human lives, uncertainty and doubts will inevitably intrude. When faced with those, what can you do to steady yourself? One suggestion: Turn to the poem “When in Doubt” by Sandra Cisneros, where she generously shares some of the wisdom that she’s gleaned over the years.

To be alive is to be in conversation with the dead. The ghosts of loved ones are always swirling around us, and sometimes we’re lucky enough to catch a glimpse. In the poem “Three Mangoes, £1,” Kandace Siobhan Walker describes a surprising encounter with her late grandmother at a busy market, and an encounter with a stranger.

It is an intimate thing, to watch a lover while they sleep. In Francisco Aragón’s translation of Francisco X. Alarcón’s homoerotic poem, “Asleep You Become a Continent,” a man views his sleeping lover’s body like it’s a landscape: legs underneath sheets become mountains and valleys. The waking lover describes this view like an explorer might an unknown country; wondering what he will find.

Conor Kerr’s “Winter Songs” depicts a future scene: coyotes roaming through a rewilded city, digging up the bones of Indigenous ancestors who then regenerate and reclaim what was taken. Power is dismantled, something original is restored.

Valencia Robin’s poem portrays a tense relationship between mother and daughter; perhaps each resembling the other too much. In desperation — and shock — the daughter says the worst thing she can think of to her mother. What follows is like the fall of a dictator, a coup, an end, an opening.

In a poem about how a small moment can help you make a wise decision, Eugenia Leigh finds the strength to go back home after storming out. No self-pity in the poem, just humor and brilliance. She had every reason to leave, and finds every reason to return.

Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama is back on Monday, January 1. Featured poets in this season include Amber McBride, Eugenia Leigh, Francisco Aragón, Ray Young Bear, and many more. New episodes released every Monday and Friday through February 23. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.

Friends, Pádraig here — we are awakening your Poetry Unbound feed to share this brilliant episode from the newest season of On Being, which is well underway. Conversations on love and loss, comedy and ecology, social creativity, poetry, and more all await you in the On Being feed — subscribe now and don’t miss out. And — Poetry Unbound Season 8 is in production and will be arriving this winter.

How can russet potatoes be made to taste of sugar and caramel? By dedication, love, and craft. Amanda Gunn places her poetry in conversation with the farming and culinary skills of her forebears: women who cultivated land, survival, strength, and family bonds.

A central duality appears in the work of Henri Cole: the revelation of emotional truths in concert with a “symphony of language” — often accompanied by arresting similes. We are excited to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Henri, recorded during the 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, New Jersey. Together, they discuss the role of animals in Henri’s work, the pleasure of aesthetics in poetry, and writing as a form of revenge against forgetting.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s poems are filled with butchery and blood as she carves space for desire, motherhood, and an encyclopedic knowledge of plants to coexist in life and on the page. We are excited to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Aimee, recorded during the 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, New Jersey. Together, they explore the beauty of solitude, eroticism in poetry, and a letter writing practice for taking inventory of a life.

Through her poetry, Patricia Smith generously, skillfully puts language around what can be seen both in the present and deliberately looking back at oneself. We are excited to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Patricia, recorded during the 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, New Jersey. Together, they explore how memory, persona, and a practice of curiosity inform Patricia’s work, and the ways writing a poem is like writing a piece of music.

So much of what was once deemed impossible was found — during Covid — to be possible. Here, a poet watches a tent, a huge temporary hospital, be raised up on the green of Central Park, a place she’d previously walked her dog.

How to remember a beloved who died tragically, violently? Remember the violence? Sometimes, yes. But also this: remember his love of flowers.

What self-consciousnesses do artists carry? It can be difficult to know how to hold onto confidence in your work, especially when small jibes from others remain long after apologies have been offered. Art compels and calls, and also complicates.

A poet reads to a room full of youths who seem to have some residual resentment to the poet. The poet doesn’t mind — he understands, and calls on the listeners to share in the power of focused anger, to make it a motivation for their creativity.

What do sandwiches, laundry, therapy, childhood homes, and forgiveness have to do with each other? Wo Chan weaves a poem that charts the many things a single day can hold.

Old stories — of mythology or religion — have sometimes been depicted as having one narrative and one interpretation. Here, J. Estanislao Lopez takes on the voice of a character whose story ended in violence, inviting listeners to claim their agency as this character claims hers.

We are delighted to offer this extended conversation between host Pádraig Ó Tuama and the poet Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe. Together, they take a deep dive into the story and language of her poem "Blue," featured in Season 7 of Poetry Unbound, as well as Sasha's beginnings in poetry.

In a poem that explores a story of a name, a story of a color, a story of a sound, a story of an identity, a the story of a person — we hear of ancestors, childhood innocences, exclusions, memories, sensualities, and the way that the dead are not always dead.

On one particular day, a poem places events alongside each other, the ordinariness of each event casting the other events into light and shade.

Why do we do the things we do when we’re young? Brenda Cárdenas recalls nights sneaking out of the house as a teenager, looking for highs, looking for company. “Why would you do that?” is the adult question throughout the poem. “Why wouldn’t I?” is a reply.

An item of clothing — the blouse of a grandmother — is praised for its artistry, is remembered for how it sits on the body. And then, having been lost, is remade, refined, and reimagined on a new body that recalls the bodies of women of previous generations.

What might have been? A poet recalls flirtations and electric connections that could have led to a different life.

If you had to make a self portrait of your daily morning routine through language and sensation, what would you include? John Lee Clark offers memories of a birthday through experiences the body holds.

A memory from childhood is viewed through the lens of the Malaysian poetic form of pantoum. New things emerge when lines break and reform with new associations.

If you could put a lock of your hair under a microscope, what would it contain? DNA certainly, but here in dg nanouk okpik’s poem, the hair also contains memory, smell, location, disease, dreams, and medicine.

Pádraig reflects on the transformative force of poetry, and Krista joins with an invitation to pay tribute to the ongoing work of Poetry Unbound. Make a gift and learn more at onbeing.org/LoveUs.

A social worker holds a group for teenagers at a school. They only half pay attention to him. Then something happens, and they pay attention to each other.

Have you ever had a private moment — perhaps in the middle of the night — in a large city? When it just seems like it’s you and the great dreaming metropolis? Rowan Ricardo Phillips brings us into a memory he can’t forget, complete with a Wu-Tang Clan soundtrack.

In a poem of strict rhymes and old forms, Alexander Posey (1873-1908), a poet of the Creek Nation, poses challenges to pomposity.

In a church there are liturgies and prayers and statues. But in José Olivarez’s poem, there are more urgent things taking place, things that have “no time to wait.”

Friendships deserve praise songs and here’s a praise song — an ode — to friends that have crossed continents for each other, and would go further if needed.

Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama is back on Monday, May 22. Featured poets in this season include Selina Nwulu, Wo Chan, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Mark Turcotte, and many more. New episodes released every Monday and Friday through July 28.

Friends, we are awakening your Poetry Unbound feed for a moment to share this episode from the big, beautiful new season of On Being. And Pádraig’s here with a quick hello and a glimpse of what more On Being conversations await you in coming months. You won’t want to miss — subscribe now in the On Being feed and catch each episode as it drops, every Thursday.

As part of a celebratory launch party for the new Poetry Unbound book, Pádraig welcomed Lorna Goodison, former Poet Laureate of Jamaica, into a joyful Zoom room of poetry lovers and listeners of the show, old and new. We draw Season 6 to a close with their conversation on themes explored in Lorna’s poem “Reporting Back to Queen Isabella” (one of the 50 featured in the book): poetry as a “made thing”; poetry as a form of travel. And: Pádraig chats with our wonderful producer and composer Gautam Srikishan on the role of music in the show, with a warm hello from all the humans behind Poetry Unbound.