Poetry Unbound

On Being Studios

Short and unhurried, Poetry Unbound is an immersive exploration of a single poem, hosted by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Pádraig Ó Tuama greets you at the doorways of brilliant poems and walks you through — each one has wisdom to offer and questions to ask you. Already a listener? There’s also a book (Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World), a Substack newsletter with a vibrant conversation in the comments, and occasional gatherings.

  • 15 minutes 16 seconds
    Carmen Giménez — Ars Poetica

    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?

    Carmen Giménez is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the NBCC Award in Poetry, and Be Recorder (Graywolf Press, 2019), a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She was awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Prize in 2020. A 2019 Guggenheim fellow, she served as the publisher of Noemi Press for 20 years. She is the Publisher and Executive Director of Graywolf Press.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Carmen Giménez’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. Order your copy of Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig) wherever you buy books.

    10 February 2025, 7:00 am
  • 17 minutes 43 seconds
    Rick Barot — The Singing

    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?

    Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and attended Wesleyan University and The Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Barot teaches at Pacific Lutheran University and is the director of the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific Lutheran University. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2020, and his most recent collection is Moving the Bones.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Rick Barot’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    3 February 2025, 7:00 am
  • 16 minutes 21 seconds
    Diannely Antigua — Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me

    “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?

    Diannely Antigua is a Dominican-American poet and educator who was born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection, Ugly Music, won a 2020 Whiting Award and the Pamet River Prize. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to study in Florence, Italy. She was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and the recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in the Best of the Net Anthology and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She currently serves as the poet laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and is the host of the podcast Bread & Poetry. Her most recent poetry collection is Good Monster.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Diannely Antigua’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    27 January 2025, 7:00 am
  • 14 minutes 52 seconds
    Don McKay — Neanderthal Dig

    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.

    Don McKay is the multi-award-winning author of multiple books of poetry, including Lurch, ParadoxidesStrike/Slip (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize), and CamberSelected Poems (finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and a Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year). McKay has taught poetry in universities across Canada. He currently lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Don McKay’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    20 January 2025, 7:00 am
  • 17 minutes 26 seconds
    Ernesto Cardenal — Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5)

    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.

    Ernesto Cardenal (1925–2020) was a Catholic priest and poet who was born in Nicaragua. From 1979 to 1988, he served as the Minister of Culture there. Cardenal was the author of several volumes of poetry, including Pluriverse, Zero Hour, Apocalypse, and In Cuba.

    Jonathan Cohen is an award-winning translator of Latin American poetry and a scholar of inter-American literature. He has translated Ernesto Cardenal, Enrique Lihn, Pedro Mir, and Roque Dalton, among others, and his own poems and essays have been widely published. He is the author of pioneering critical works on Pablo Neruda and Muna Lee.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Jonathan Cohen’s translation of Ernesto Cardenal’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    13 January 2025, 7:00 am
  • 20 minutes 4 seconds
    Diego Báez — Inheritance

    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.

    Diego Báez, is a writer and educator in Chicago, where he teaches at the City Colleges of Chicago. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University - Newark. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, Báez’s work has been published in Freeman's, The Rumpus, The Georgia Review, The Thing Itself Journal, Number Eleven Magazine, and Hobart. His poetry has appeared in Luna Luna, la fovea, Granta, and elsewhere. He serves as a Director of the Board for the National Book Critics Circle and the International David Foster Wallace Society. Báez was an inaugural fellow at CantoMundo in 2010. Yaguareté White, published in 2024 by The University of Arizona Press, is his debut poetry collection.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Diego Báez’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    20 December 2024, 7:00 am
  • 16 minutes 7 seconds
    Danielle Chapman — Trespassing with Tweens

    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.

    Danielle Chapman is a poet, essayist, and lecturer in English at Yale University. Her most recent collection of poetry, Boxed Juice, was published in 2024 by Unbounded Edition Press. Her previous collection of poems, Delinquent Palaces, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2015, and her memoir, Holler: A Poet Among Patriots, was released by Unbound Edition Press in 2023. For several years, Chapman served as the Director of Literary Arts and Events for the City of Chicago, and she was also an editor at Poetry Magazine. She currently teaches Shakespeare and creative writing and lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with her family.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Danielle Chapman’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    16 December 2024, 7:00 am
  • 12 minutes 18 seconds
    Richard Langston — Hill walk

    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.

    Richard Langston is a veteran broadcast journalist and director. He comes from Dunedin, New Zealand, and was a driving force in the city’s music scene in the 1980s. He now lives in Wellington and is a proud member of the three-person South Wellington Poetry Society. His poetry collection, Five O’Clock Shadows, was published in 2020 by The Cuba Press.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Richard Langston’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    13 December 2024, 7:00 am
  • 12 minutes 18 seconds
    Robert Hayden — Those Winter Sundays

    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.

    Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was the first Black American poet to be appointed the Consultant of Poetry to the Library of Congress (now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate); he held this role from 1976 to 1978. Hayden was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Hopwood Award, Academy of American Poets Fellowship, Grand Prize for Poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, and Russell Loines Award for distinguished poetic achievement from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Robert Hayden’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

     

    9 December 2024, 7:00 am
  • 13 minutes 21 seconds
    Taylor Johnson — Pennsylvania Ave. SE

    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.

    Taylor Johnson is proud of being from Washington, D.C. He has received fellowships and scholarships from CALLALOO, Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, VONA, Tin House, Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, Conversation Literary Festival, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference, among others. In 2017, Johnson received the Larry Neal Writers' Award from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His poems appear in The Baffler, Indiana Review, Scalawag, and The Paris Review, among other journals and literary magazines. His first book, Inheritance, was published in November 2020 by Alice James Books.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Taylor Johnson’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

    6 December 2024, 7:00 am
  • 14 minutes 56 seconds
    Kinsale Drake — Put on that KTNN

    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.

    Kinsale Drake (Diné) is a poet, playwright, and performer based out of the Southwest U.S. She is a winner of the 2023 National Poetry Series Competition. Her poetry collection, The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket, was published by The University of Georgia Press in 2024. Drake’s work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Poets.org, Best New Poets, Black Warrior Review, Nylon, MTV, Teen Vogue, Time, and elsewhere. She recently graduated from Yale University, where she received the J. Edgar Meeker Prize, Academy of American Poets College Prize, Young Native Playwrights Award, and the 2022 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. She is the founder of NDN Girls Book Club.

    Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

    We’re pleased to offer Kinsale Drake’s poem and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

    2 December 2024, 7:00 am
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