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.

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. 

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

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.

Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.

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. Watch the full, unedited event here.

Find Lorna Goodison’s poem in Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, and in Season 3 of Poetry Unbound.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for Season 6 — we’ll be back with Season 7 later in 2023. In the meantime, continue your poetry ritual through our weekly Substack newsletter, with more musings and prompts from Pádraig and lively community of conversation in the comments.

A younger woman looks at an older woman, admiring her beauty, skill, and freedom. Older now, she thinks of how hard-won such freedom is.

Also: singing opera while taking off your clothes. That too.

We’re pleased to offer Danusha Laméris’ poem, and thank you for joining us for Season 6 of Poetry Unbound. We’ll be back with Season 7 later in 2023.

Order your copy of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our vibrant conversational space on Substack.

Who brings you to praise? Rumi’s great poem of praise to the “you” is to his great friend Shams, and through that friendship, to God.

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

Order your copy of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our vibrant conversational space on Substack.

What’s it like to be owned by the world, to have populations claiming you, to have millions speaking on your behalf? Naomi Shihab Nye takes a close look — from a distance — at Jesus, and herself.

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

Order your copy of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our vibrant conversational space on Substack.