Poems for the Speed of Life

Welcome to this episode of Poems for the Speed of Life with Shane Breslin, writer, business owner, poetry advocate and poet. This is the fourth episode of this series of the show on ⁠⁠⁠the theme of "Fatherhood”⁠⁠⁠ . Today's poem is "The Gift" by Li-Young Lee. ⁠⁠⁠ You can read today’s poem here ⁠⁠⁠ *** For a detailed outline of the mission and purpose behind this podcast, please...

Welcome to this episode of Poems for the Speed of Life with Shane Breslin, writer, business owner, poetry advocate and poet. This is the fourth episode of this series of the show on ⁠⁠the theme of "Fatherhood”⁠⁠ . Today's poem is "My Father's Hats" by Mark Irwin ⁠⁠ You can read today’s poem here ⁠⁠ *** For a detailed outline of the mission and purpose behind this podcast, pl...

Welcome to this episode of Poems for the Speed of Life with Shane Breslin, writer, business owner, poetry advocate and poet. This is the third episode of this series of the show on ⁠the theme of "Fatherhood”⁠ . Today's poem is "Father's Song" by Gregory Orr. ⁠ You can read today’s poem here ⁠ *** For a detailed outline of the mission and purpose behind this podcast, please c...

This is the second episode of this series on Fatherhood. Today's poem is a song lyric: ⁠"The Living Years" by Mike Rutherford , of Mike and the Mechanics. For full show notes please visit the podcast page on Substack. ** All the poems in this series will be about fathers or by fathers. They will have something vital to show us about the experience, either of fatherhood itself, or of...

Welcome to another series of Poems for the Speed of Life with Shane Breslin, writer, business owner helping organisations build digital empires, poetry advocate, poet and podcaster. This is the first episode of this series on Fatherhood. Today's poem is "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden . For full show notes please visit the podcast page on Substack. All the poems in this serie...

Welcome to another series of Poems for the Speed of Life with Shane Breslin, writer, business owner helping organisations build digital empires, poetry advocate, poet and podcaster. The next series of Poems for the Speed of Life will begin on Saturday, June 8th, 2024. The theme for the new series is Fatherhood. Shane is a father of two school-age children and he sees it as the biggest responsibili...

Today’s poem is “Begin” by Brendan Kennelly, the much-loved Irish poet who died in 2021 at the age of 85. It is a poem about the beauty in the awareness of the ordinary precious world around us, and also about the foreverness, the sense of the eternal that comes through all endings and finality and loss. For full show notes for this episode, visit the episode page on Substack . Thank you for joini...

Today's poem is "Dawn Revisited" by Rita Dove, the former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner. You can ⁠read the full show notes and join the community over on Substack here⁠ . You can read the poem here⁠ .

Today's episode brings you three of the Cantos from "In Memoriam AHH" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written over 16 years and published in 1850. You can read the full show notes and join the community over on Substack here . The full text of the poem is available here . You can find these three Cantos by scrolling down the page⁠ to the Roman numerals XXII (22), V (5) and VII (7).

Today’s poem is "The birthday of the world" by Marge Piercy, an American writer, poet and activist who has published more than 20 collections of poetry spanning more than 50 years. This is Episode 9 of this series called "Beginnings", which started with "How Dark the Beginning" by Maggie Smith in Episode 201. ⁠⁠You can read today's poem here⁠

Today’s poem is "The Fisherman", by WB Yeats, the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet who died in 1939. This is Episode 8 of this series called "Beginnings", which started with "How Dark the Beginning" by Maggie Smith in Episode 201. ⁠⁠You can read today's poem here

Today’s poem is "This is not the end" by Tanner Olson, an American poet based in Tennessee. This is Episode 7 of this series called "Beginnings", which started with "How Dark the Beginning" by Maggie Smith in Episode 201. ⁠You can read today's poem here

Today’s poem is "Dawn at St Patrick's" by Derek Mahon, an Irish poet who died in 2020 at the age of 78. This is Episode 6 of this series called "Beginnings", which started with "How Dark the Beginning" by Maggie Smith in Episode 201. You can read the poem here

This is the fifth episode of this series of "Beginnings" from Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Beginning" by Lia Purpura. Lia Purpura is an American poet, writer and educator who has published four collections of poems, King Baby ,  Stone Sky Lifting ,  The Brighter the Veil and the collection from which today's poem is taken  It Shouldn't Have Been Bea...

This is an episode of a special series of Poems for the Speed of Life titled "Beginnings". Today's poem is "For a New Beginning" by John O'Donohue. John O’Donohue was a great Irish spiritual leader, teacher, theologian and philosopher who continues to find new audiences all over the world more than 15 years after his passing at just 54 years of age. Three earlier John O...

This is the third episode in this series, "Beginnings", on Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Center of the Universe" by Hannah Emerson. Hannah Emerson is a nonspeaking autistic poet from Lafayette, New York whose work has been featured in  The Paris Review ,  Poetry   magazine , and the Poetry Society of America . Hannah Emerson writes a regular Substack called...

This is the second episode of a new series of Poems for the Speed of Life titled "Beginnings". Today's poem is "Aristotle" by Billy Collins, an American poet and former US poet laureate.

This is the first episode of a new series of Poems for the Speed of Life titled "Beginnings". Today's poem is "How Dark the Beginning" by Maggie Smith. Maggie Smith is an American poet, writer and editor, not to be confused with the older British film actor. Film does, however, feature in this poem about the nuances of light and dark, and how the dawn, and beginnings, are o...

Thank you for listening to Poems for the Speed of Life, with Shane Breslin. Please enjoy this special episode about the future direction of the podcast, what you can expect and how you can get involved. There are four announcements: This podcast will always be free and available wherever you listen to podcasts If you like you can support the show financially (more details to follow) The show from...

Welcome to another episode in this special Christmas and end of year series of this podcast. The work of John O’Donohue, the great Irish spiritual leader, teacher, theologian and philosopher, continues to find new audiences all over the world more than 15 years after his passing at just 54 years of age. Two John O’Donohue poems have been among the most sought after episodes of this podcast. You ca...

Jan Richardson is an artist, writer, and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church in the USA. She travels widely as a retreat leader and conference speaker. This poem is part of a special Christmas-themed short series for the end of the year. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You can read the poem here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** For a detailed outline of the mission and purpose behind this podcast, please check out Episode...

Dylan Thomas was a Welsh writer and poet. This is one of his best-remembered pieces of writing, a long prose poem recounting his memories of the Christmases of his childhood. This recording was originally made in 2019 as part of a different podcast project, but I thought it would be good to dust it off and re-edit it slightly to include here. It's one of my favourite pieces of Christmas writin...

Hi. Thank you for your patience and presence as I think through the next steps for this podcast. Poetry can be a transformational experience, and the last thing I ever want to do is reduce something that’s transformational into something that’s just transactional. Finally, if you would like to let me know what you think, I will gratefully receive your messages. You can email me at shane [at] shane...

Adelaide Crapsey was an American poet who died in 1914 at the age of just 36. She often wrote in the format called the "cinquain", a tightly structured form of poetry that owes something to the old Japanese haiku. The cinquain includes one stanza of five lines, with a per-line syllable structure of 2-4-6-8-2. This poem, about the quiet of a November night, is included here because this m...

Wendell Berry has been writing and publishing poetry and prose for more than 60 years. He has featured in this podcast before in Episode 70 ("The Peace of Wild Things"). It's interesting that the core idea of that earlier poem, peace, returns here. What is it to be "at peace and in place"? What is it for a man to be "at peace and in place"? What is it for a man to...