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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.”

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