Poetry Unbound

Poet, translator, and musician Haleh Liza Gafori describes the revered 13th-century Persian poet Rumi as “a good pal to humanity”. As she puts it, “He's rooting for our liberation.” In this exuberant conversation recorded for the 2025 Greenbelt Festival, she reads some of her translations, and she and Pádraig Ó Tuama illuminate the life of the man known as Rumi — his intense love of all things earthly and divine, the Islamic faith and universalist vision that flow through his work, and his life-changing connection with Shams, a Sufi mystic who catalyzed Rumi’s transformation from preacher to poet. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Haleh Liza Ghafori is a New York City-born translator, poet, and musician of Iranian descent. Her most recent book of translations of poetry by the 13th-century mystic Rumi is entitled Water and was released in April of 2025 by New York Review Books. Her first translation of Rumi was the acclaimed Gold , released in 2022, also by New York Review Books. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“For me, if a poem doesn't swing, it's really not much of a poem,” says Adrian Matejka, author of the collection Be Easy: New and Selected Poems . His work hums with music, from its references to David Bowie, Miles Davis, and others to its infectious rhythms, repetitions, and rhymes. In this lively conversation recorded in 2024 at the Wick Poetry Center in Ohio, he reads several poems, and he and Pádraig Ó Tuama talk about “the imaginary discotheque” that takes place in Adrian’s head when he writes, how metaphor and simile offer a third space for his ideas to reach people, and his intense interest in exploring “masculinities” in all their expressions and emotions. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Adrian Matejka is the author of many books of poetry, including most recently Be Easy: New and Selected Poems , which was published by W.W. Norton in 2026. He also serves as the editor of Poetry magazine, and he was poet laureate of the state of Indiana from 2018 to 2019. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

After listening to this exuberant interview, you’ll retire the phrase “lost in translation” from your vocabulary. Instead, writer and scholar Karen Leeder believes poetry can expand when translated, reaching new audiences and gaining new layers of meaning. Karen joins Pádraig Ó Tuama in an interview recorded in 2025 after she and Durs Grünbein were co-awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for her translation of Psyche Running , which Durs wrote. In addition to reading from her work, she explains what it’s like to translate a poet who is very much alive and why she thinks translation can help “explode” insularity and xenophobia. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Karen Leeder is a writer, scholar, and translator of contemporary German literature. She has received many accolades for her translations, including being co-awarded (with Durs Grünbein) the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize for her translation of Psyche Running by Durs Grünbein . She is the Schwarz-Taylor Chair of the German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“Poetry means paying attention in a different way to the world and seeing what wisdom you're given back in return for that attention,” says Richard Scott in this conversation with Pádraig Ó Tuama, recorded during the 2025 Collective Trauma Summit. Richard’s second collection, That Broke Into Shining Crystals , features sequences that focus on two hypnotically compelling subjects: still-life paintings and crystals. From them, he’s created poems that thrum with music, memory, harm, and healing. Richard reads from his book, and he and Pádraig discuss the “surprising life” to be found in still lifes, the difference between the speaker vs. the poet, and how crystals — the beautiful result of “unimaginable” pressure and breakage — can offer us a way to think about trauma. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Richard Scott was born in London in 1981, and his debut collection, Soho , which came out in 2018, was a Gay's The Word Book of the Year, and it was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Costa Poetry Award as well. His second poetry collection, That Broke into Shining Crystals , was published this year by Faber & Faber also. He's a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths at the University of London, and he runs a poetry writing group there, and he also teaches poetry at the Faber Academy. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“It had to involve more than just a slim volume of verse,” says Kimberly Campanello about MOTHERBABYHOME , her ongoing visual poetry project which centers the 796 infants and children who died at the St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, in the west of Ireland, between 1926 and 1961. So it consists of 796 sheets of vellum with text from archival and contemporary sources that she’s shaped into a work that blends documentation and lamentation, reportage and rite. In this Zoom conversation between Kimberly and Pádraig Ó Tuama — part two of two — recorded in 2025, Kimberly reads an excerpt from MOTHERBABYHOME, and then she and Pádraig discuss whether all poets want to be priests and how poetry is the ultimate DIY activity. Or, as Kimberly puts it, “You don't have to learn an instrument to be a poet.” We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Kimberly Campanello is a poet, translator, and performance artist. Her most recent projects are the poetry collection An Interesting Detail , the novel Use the Words You Have , and MOTHERBABYHOME . She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“It's about seeing, through reading, whether where you are going has been or is now or will be written, or not.” This deliciously twisty line is from Kimberly Campanello’s ongoing versioning of Dante’s Inferno , and as in that sentence, she is translating and reconfiguring the 700-year-old work of poetry to reflect her life, her family’s lives, your life, our life, and, indeed, our lives today. We are delighted to bring you this exhilarating conversation — part one of two — between Kimberly and Pádraig Ó Tuama that was recorded over Zoom in 2025. In addition to reading excerpts from her redone Dante, she and Pádraig talk about the English teacher who made an indelible impression on her, the roles of love and time in the Inferno , and how an early-onset Parkinson’s diagnosis has shaped her thinking and writing. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Kimberly Campanello's recent projects are the poetry collection An Interesting Detail , the novel Use the Words You Have , and MOTHERBABYHOME . She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“Poetry should be horrifying,” says Rachel Mann. “It should be … on the edge of the edge of what could be said.” We are delighted to bring you this vibrant conversation featuring Rachel and Yomi Ṣode speaking with Pádraig Ó Tuama at the 2024 StAnza Poetry Festival in Scotland. Rachel and Yomi each read poems, and then go on to discuss grace, who receives it, and who deserves it; the place of grief and remembrance in their work; and how writing about historical figures is a way to disrupt and re-vision both the past and the present. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Rachel Mann is a priest, writer, and broadcaster. Her second poetry collection, Eleanor Among the Saints , was published by Carcanet in January of 2024. Yomi Ṣode is an award-winning Nigerian-British writer. His debut poetry collection, Manorism , was published by Penguin in October of 2022. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From a young age, says Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah, “I had such a fascination with the way the alphabet makes music in the mind.” We are thrilled to offer this thoughtful conversation between Pádraig and Fady, recorded when Fady received the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize. Fady reads several poems — including two with the same name! — and speaks of how memory, time, history, faith, love, violence, and difference figure in his work. He says, “Ultimately for my existence as a Palestinian in the 20th or 21st century … I am also always, particularly in English, bridging a gap.” We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Fady Joudah is the author of six collections of poems and has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic. He is the editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and his most recent collection, [ … ] , was published in 2024 by Milkweed Editions. This interview was recorded on the occasion of him receiving the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“I still have the best three-point shot of any Canadian poet born before 1943” is one of the first things that acclaimed poet Don McKay says in this expansive and intimate exchange. We are thrilled to offer this conversation between Padraig and Don, recorded from a virtual interview held on the occasion of Don receiving the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Poetry Prizes. After touching on his early devotion to basketball, Don speaks of his lifelong passion for geology and birds, how Newfoundland is considered “opera for geologists”, and why he favors membership over mastery when it comes to relating to Earth’s other living creatures. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Don McKay has published 10 previous works of poetry. He's been shortlisted twice for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and in 2024 won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Poetry Prizes. He lives in Newfoundland, Canada. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama shares “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, a favorite childhood poem of his, and offers an audio postscript to Season 10 of Poetry Unbound . Later in 2026, he will bring us more Poetry Unbound to look forward to — find out what and when here. In the meantime, you can listen to past episodes of Poetry Unbound or to new episodes of On Being with Krista Tippett , out now. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Walter de la Mare was born on April 25, 1873, in London. He is the author of numerous books, including The Veil and Other Poems (Constable & Company, 1921) and The Listeners (Constable & Company, 1912). He died on June 22, 1956, in Twickenham, England. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Have you ever watched, in awe, as a skilled gymnast or skater lifts off and completes a dizzying number of revolutions in less than a second before landing safely back down? That’s how you may feel upon reading the great Leonard Cohen’s urgent, dreamlike poem “I, 8” from Book of Mercy . In his telling of a man’s fall “from his high place” into “disgrace”, Cohen sends us on a short, 206-word journey that seamlessly weaves together narration, fiction, meditation, devotion, and prayer. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Leonard Cohen had an artistic career that began in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies . He published two novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers , and 10 books of poetry, most recently Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs and Book of Longing . During a recording career that spanned almost 50 years, he released 14 studio albums, the last of which, You Want It Darker , was released in 2016. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize in 2011. He died on November 7, 2016. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Will you leave this episode feeling uplifted, envious, curious, or something else entirely? Yes. Billy-Ray Belcourt’s poem “Subarctica” transports you to a vividly specific time — “the coldest December / on record, I haven’t left my mother’s / house in over a week” — where the primary view is of poplars in “a tiny schoolyard”. Amid the simplicity and snow, the speaker shifts their perspective, seeing beyond their past and towards the wonder in their present and in what is to come. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is the author of six books, including the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning debut This Wound Is a World . Belcourt serves as the Canada Research Chair in Queer Indigenous Cultural Production at the University of British Columbia and also edits poetry for Hazlitt . Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ruth Irupé Sanabria’s delicious and dexterous “ Carne ” begins with these lines: “I've eaten pork from / pernil to chuletas to chitterlings.” And just in case you were wondering — and even if you’re not — the speaker goes on to list much more of the seafood, poultry, and animal parts that have been consumed and how they were cooked. Lest you think this poem is simply a meat-eater’s manifesto, savor its final turn towards what else the speaker is really hungry for. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Ruth Irupé Sanabria’s first collection of poetry, The Strange House Testifies , was published by Bilingual Review Press. Her second collection, Beasts Behave in Foreign Land , received the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Prize. She is a Dodge Poet, a CantoMundo Fellow, and holds an MFA in poetry from NYU. She works as a high school English teacher in New Jersey. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Loving in the face of violence, danger, and distress is an act of defiance, as demonstrated in Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s achingly beautiful poem “Dukka”. The Palestinian American writer spotlights seven aspects of love in action — between father and newborn, for example, a journalist and her audience, a pair of intimates dining out. She shows us the “million ways to love” flowing through her community and cascading through generations, centuries, millennia, as inexorable and constant as the ocean and as bright and surprising as a rare meteor shower. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (The University of Akron Press, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize; Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 CLMP Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award; and Water & Salt (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention of the 2018 Arab American Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks: Arab in Newsland , winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize, and Letters from the Interior , finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rachel Mann’s “#TDOR” manages to turn a depiction of one side of a conversation about marking Trans Day of Remembrance into a poem that is both empathic and uncompromising. Mann captures the verbal stammers and stumbles of the well-meaning but leaves us to reckon whether the words land as mirror, mockery, or cry for action. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Rachel Mann is a priest, writer, and broadcaster. She is the author of 13 books, including her debut poetry collection, A Kingdom of Love , and the acclaimed nonfiction, Fierce Imaginings: The Great War, Ritual, Memory, and God . She is a Visiting Teaching Fellow at Manchester Writing School and broadcasts regularly, including as a contributor to Thought For The Day . Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sanah Ahsan’s evocative “Ramadan’s Greeting” brings us into the thoughts and experiences of a person observing the holiest month in Islam. In nine brief couplets, the poet deftly directs our attention towards some of the rich contrasts that emerge at this time — between light and dark, desire and abstinence, self and community — as well as the abiding satisfactions and joys. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Sanah Ahsan is a poet, liberation psychologist, and educator. Sanah’s work plays in the wild terrain of woundedness, the sacred landscapes of falling apart, centering compassion and embracing each other's madness. Their work draws on therapeutics, psychospirituality, embodiment, and poetics as life-affirming practices. Some of Sanah’s media work includes writing for The Guardian , delivering a TEDx Talk, and presenting a Channel 4 documentary on the overmedicalization of people’s distress. Sanah is working on a nonfiction book about the politics of distress, and society’s relationship with unruly emotions. As a poet, Sanah won the Out-Spoken Poetry Performance Prize and has been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The White Review Poetry Prize, and Bridport Poetry Prize . Sanah’s debut poetry collection, I cannot be good until you say it , is a meditation on Islam, queerness, and goodness. It was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection and Polari Prize, and selected as one of The Guardian ’s Best Poetry Books. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“O come, in any way you want” is the first line in Kevin Hart’s marvelous, mystical “Prayer”. So come to this poem — whether for its deliciously sensual language (“bouts of rain”, “wind that wraps”, “raw and ragged smells / [o]f gumleaves”, and more), its air of mystery, or its unabashed aching for a “you” — and then linger for a while. Stay with it, or let it stay with you, and see what emerges. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Kevin Hart's most recent collections of poetry are Firefly (Pitt St. Poetry, 2026) and Carnets (Cascade, 2025). Other collections include Wild Track: New and Selected Poems (Notre Dame UP, 2015) and Barefoot (Notre Dame UP, 2018). A collection of new selected poems, 101 Poems , is forthcoming from Pitt St. Poetry. He teaches at Duke University in Durham, NC. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Too many of us left high school thinking that a poem could be taken seriously only if it was difficult to understand, subdued in its use of rhyme and alliteration, and addressed lofty topics. Harryette Mullen’s saucy, suggestive “LVTOFU” bulldozes through convention, all the while revelling in its own rhythms, references, and humor. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Harryette Mullen is the author of eight books of poetry, including Urban Tumbleweed , Recyclopedia , and Sleeping with the Dictionary , which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is there to say or do when the life of a loved one has been upended and devastated? Stewart Henderson’s poem “How To Speak Love In A Storm?” offers a tender masterclass in how you can accompany someone — or even just yourself — through a time of tumult and pain. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Stewart Henderson is a Liverpool-born, best-selling poet, song lyricist, and award-winning broadcaster. He has published over a dozen poetry collections, including A Poet’s Notebook: with new poems, obviously (2018), Urban Angel (2000), and Assembled in Britain (1986). Henderson has also authored three volumes of poetry for children, with poems from those books included on the UK National Education Curriculum. He hosted the program Questions, Questions on BBC Radio 4 for eight years. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dante Micheaux’s rich and rollicking poem “Theologies for Korah” is written on the occasion of an infant’s baptism, but it’s anything but baby talk or bland instruction. Religious figures, rites, and symbols are proffered, not as liturgy or lore to be swallowed whole, eyes shut, but as people, stories, and ideas that cry out to be seen, played with, and engaged with. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack , read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns , or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes . Dante Micheaux is the author of Circus , which won the Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the T. S. Eliot Foundation, and Amorous Shepherd . His poems and translations have appeared in African American Review, The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Literary Imagination, Poem­-A-Day, Poetry, and Tongue , among other journals and anthologies. Micheaux’s other honors include the Oscar Wilde Award, an Amy Clampitt Residency, the Ambit Prize, and a fellowship from The New York Times Foundation. He is a Fellow and Artistic Director at Cave Canem Foundation. Micheaux’s most recent work is the libretto, Sky in a Small Cage . Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.