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.

Listen in PodNod RSS feed Show website

224 episodes
Updated July 24

Episodes224

Newest first

January 19 · 14 min
Cyrus Cassells — Jasmine
In fewer than two dozen lines, Cyrus Cassells’s poem “Jasmine” offers readers a multisensory, cinematic immersion into late spring life in Rome. Not only is the “sweet, steady broadcast” of jasmine ever-present amid “the joyous braiding of sun and rain”, but there’s also Daria, a “crone-glorious” neighbor, with a story about her romance with the gallant Galliano. It’s la dolce vita, without overindulgence or artifice. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read
January 16 · 15 min
W.S. Merwin — For The Anniversary of My Death
W.S. Merwin’s “For The Anniversary of My Death” is a slim, precise poem — just 13 lines made up of 84 words — about the very weightiest of subjects, one’s future death. With it, Merwin has crafted an elegant vessel, a small and sturdy container to hold some of life’s big questions, uncertainties, and feelings. Are you ready to gaze at it, grasp it, sit with it? And as you contemplate death, he gently reminds, remain here — where there’s rain, birdsong, and life right in front of you.
January 12 · 20 min
Kimblerly Blaeser - my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers
Words can’t quite fully capture the activity, oddity, and awe that is everywhere around us, but poet Kimberly Blaeser makes a gorgeous attempt in her poem “my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers.” The three stanzas overflow with an exuberance of colorful creatures — from checked loons and flitting mayflies to a “blissful beaver” and a “red squirrel swimming (yes! swimming)” — and with love — love of the natural world, of looking, of language, of the language of looking, and of being p
Dec 19, 2025 · 58 min
Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Marie Howe
Marie Howe’s poetry shimmers with the keen attention she pays to language: the language of the body (both the human body and “the beautiful body of the world”), of people’s everyday speech, and of religious myth. We are thrilled to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Marie, recorded as an online component of the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2025. Marie reads several poems, and together, they discuss Mary Magdalene as complex everywoman, the “eternal energy” of dead loved ones that fi
Dec 12, 2025 · 54 min
Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Lorna Goodison
“Spending time in hell is not my idea of something that one should do,” says poet Lorna Goodison, yet she immersed herself there for years to create her extraordinary modern Jamaican translation of Dante’s Inferno. We are thrilled to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Lorna, recorded as an online component of the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2025. She reads from her work, and together, they discuss Lorna’s inspiration for her underworld undertaking, how she found her Virgil, and why
Mar 3, 2025 · 17 min
Denise Duhamel — How It Will End
Have you ever gotten consumed by watching a couple argue in public and trying to decipher what’s really going on between them? Denise Duhamel’s deliciously entertaining “How It Will End” offers us that experience. Come for the voyeurism, stay for the awareness it stirs up. Why are we so captivated by other people’s disagreements? And how can what we notice about them teach us about ourselves?
Feb 24, 2025 · 12 min
Fady Joudah — [...]
Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, disaster, liberty — and it finds certainty only in the shaky universal ground of that ambivalence.
Feb 17, 2025 · 12 min
Benjamin Zephaniah — To Michael Menson
Benjamin Zephaniah’s urgent, imperative “To Michael Menson” was written when he was a poet in residence at a human rights barrister in England. His poem resonates with his repeated calls for justice for a murdered Black musician — not a justice that is gullible, impotent, or hopeless but one that is clear-eyed, collaborative, and mighty.
Feb 10, 2025 · 15 min
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?
Feb 3, 2025 · 17 min
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?
Jan 27, 2025 · 16 min
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?
Jan 20, 2025 · 14 min
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.
Jan 13, 2025 · 17 min
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.
Dec 20, 2024 · 20 min
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.
Dec 16, 2024 · 16 min
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.
Dec 13, 2024 · 12 min
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.
Dec 9, 2024 · 12 min
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.
Dec 6, 2024 · 13 min
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.
Dec 2, 2024 · 14 min
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.
Nov 25, 2024 · 1 min
Poetry Unbound — Season 9 Trailer
Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama is back on Monday, December 2. Featured poets in this season include Robert Hayden, Kinsale Drake, Danielle Chapman, Diannely Antigua, and many more. New episodes every week through March 3. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.

Poetry Unbound

Cyrus Cassells — Jasmine

W.S. Merwin — For The Anniversary of My Death

Kimblerly Blaeser - my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers

Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Marie Howe

Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Lorna Goodison

Denise Duhamel — How It Will End

Fady Joudah — [...]

Benjamin Zephaniah — To Michael Menson

Carmen Giménez — Ars Poetica

Rick Barot — The Singing

Diannely Antigua — Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me

Don McKay — Neanderthal Dig

Ernesto Cardenal — Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5)

Diego Báez — Inheritance

Danielle Chapman — Trespassing with Tweens

Richard Langston — Hill walk

Robert Hayden — Those Winter Sundays

Taylor Johnson — Pennsylvania Ave. SE

Kinsale Drake — Put on that KTNN

Poetry Unbound — Season 9 Trailer