[music: “Praise the Rain” by Gautam Srikishan]

Pádraig Ó Tuama: My name is Pádraig Ó Tuama, and I present Poetry Unbound from On Being. Years ago, I was in the car with a friend and we were driving along, and we were talking about our lives, and the burdens we were carrying, and figuring out our lives. And he said to me, “Pádraig, you’re very committed to…” And I thought I knew what he was going to say, so I kind of prepared myself for a display of modesty or shirking it off, going “oh, no, not at all.” But what he actually said was: “Pádraig, you’re very committed to making your own life as difficult for yourself as possible.”

It shows the depth of friendship that he’d say something like that—he’s such a good friend and I really appreciated him saying it. And one of the things it showed me was, because I continued to think about that line over and over again, it was the unpredictably of it, it was the surprise of it that just got under my skin, and it made me reevaluate my decisions. And it made me reevaluate why am I making things difficult for myself?

So many of the poems that we’ve chosen for this next season are poems that are interested in: what does it mean to help? How can language help? How can we help ourselves, how can we help others? How is it that language itself can be something that recreates a new way of looking at the world? It can shine insight and invite to creativity and response and making something new.

[music: “Praise the Rain” by Gautam Srikishan]

Poetry Unbound is back with Season 6, starting on September 26th. There’ll be new episodes every Monday and Friday for twelve weeks. You can follow us on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

Anchor your life with poetry, and join us for Season 6 of Poetry Unbound, made for you with love by all of us at On Being.

[music: “Praise the Rain” by Gautam Srikishan]