We love the theologian Kate Bowler’s allergy to every platitude and her wisdom and wit about the strange and messy fullness of what it means to be in a human body. She’s best known for her 2018 book Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) — a poetic and powerful reflection on learning at age 35 that she had Stage IV colon cancer.

From a reset on how to think about aging, to the new reality in our time of living with cancer as a chronic illness, to the telling of truths to our young, this beautiful conversation is full of the vividly whole humanity that Kate Bowler singularly embodies.

(Also, as you’ll hear, if she hadn’t become a theologian, she might have been a stand-up comedian.)

Krista and Kate spoke as part of the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival.

A big conversation to live by starting NEXT WEEK — every Thursday — from September 21.

Loss — and love. AI — and the intelligence that lives in our bodies.

Kerry Washington, Kate Bowler, Reid Hoffman, Latanya Sweeney, Nick Cave, Baratunde Thurston … and more.

Subscribe, tell your friends, and buckle your (metaphorical) seatbelts.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Maya C. Popa’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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

We’re pleased to offer Jenny Mitchell’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Vidyan Ravinthiran’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Mark Turcotte’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Wo Chan’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

A note from the Poetry Unbound team:
We’ve updated the audio for our episode “Amanda Gunn — Ordinary Sugar.” This updated version includes an additional stanza initially omitted from the recording and additional reflection from Pádraig.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Amanda Gunn’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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’re pleased to offer J. Estanislao Lopez’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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.

Listen to our episode featuring Sasha’s poem “Blue,” and stay connected with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season. Accompany your listen with our bonus episode, “A Conversation with Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe.”

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

We’re pleased to offer Charif Shanahan’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Brenda Cárdenas’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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.

We’re pleased to offer Nithy Kasa’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

< Back to Retreat

This retreat doesn’t so much end as open — into a vision of standing on new ground together with others: metabolized community.

We let paradox settle into our sense of what is possible — including tenderness in interplay with power, and a life-giving calling of blessing.

 
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