Poems for the Speed of Life

This is Episode 117 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "The Whitsun Weddings" by Philip Larkin. Philip Larkin was an English poet, writer and librarian who died in 1985 at the age of 63. The Poetry Foundation describes him as “a great poet of middle age” with a vision that is “elegiac, one of gradual diminishment”. For all that his work is well known as raw, often rude,...

This is Episode _ of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "December at Yase" by Gary Snyder. Gary Snyder is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist who turned 93 earlier this month in May 2023. This is the second Gary Snyder poem to feature on this podcast. You can find "I Went Into the Maverick Bar" back in Episode 24. "December at Yas...

This is Episode 115 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We Are All Writing God's Poem'", by Barbara Crooker. Barbara Crooker is an American poet who has published eight collcetions, most recently Some Glad Morning in 2019. One of the things that jumps out for me in this poem is the invisible threads that connect writers to writers to writers, all those...

This is Episode 114 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "On the Move" by Thom Gunn. Thom Gunn was an English-born American poet who died in 2004 at the age of 74. He published almost 20 collections of poems and essays in his lifetime. After moving to the US in his early 20s he taught writing at Stanford University, and in the California of the 60s and 70s, the scene of ac...

This is Episode 113 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "The Habit of Laughter" by Sara Berkeley. Sara Berkeley is an Irish poet and writer who has published seven collections of poetry and one collection of fiction. In recent years she has trained to be a nurse and now works in a hospice in upstate New York. This poem "The Habit of Laughter" is from her 2010 co...

This is Episode 112 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet and Jesuit priest of the 19th century. He is well known now in literature studies for the innovation in his work, which can sometimes make his poems difficult to parse at first reading. As a student of theology, he explored themes of di...

This is Episode 111 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Touching the Bones" by Tom French. Tom French is an Irish poet, born in 1966. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, all published by Gallery Press, including Company in 2022 and his first collection Touching the Bones, of which today’s piece is the title poem, in 2001. This is the second Tom French poem t...

This is Episode 110 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Japanese Maple", by Clive James. Clive James was an Australian broadcaster, journalist and writer who died at the age of 80 in 2019. He will be familiar to many for his UK television appears in the 1980s and 90s on popular shows such as Clive James on Television and Saturday Night Clive and several “Postcard From” t...

This is Episode 109 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Love’s Philosophy" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet who died in 1822 at the age of 29. He was a friend of John Keats and George Gordon Lord Byron, who died at 25 and 36 respectively. (Shelley died in a shipping accident, Keats of tuberculosis, and Byron while fighting with t...

This is Episode 108 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now" by AE Housman. Alfred Edward or AE Housman was an English academic and poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His day-to-day work was in the study and translation of classical writers, including the Roman poets Juvenal and Lucan. Many of his poems in his two collections,...

This is Episode 107 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Thanks, Robert Frost" by David Ray. David Ray is an American poet and author of fiction, essays, and memoir, born in 1932. He has taught around the world, in Australia, New Zealand, India and in teh United States, including the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, wher...

This is Episode 106 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Mysticism for Beginners" by Adam Zagajewsky. Adam Zagajewski was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist who died in 2021 at the age of 75. His life and death are notable in the current moment, for a couple of reasons. First, he was born in 1945 in Lviv, a city then in Poland, and now in Ukraine. As a baby...

This is Episode 105 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Vanity" by Kathryn Stripling Byer. Kathryn Stripling Byer or Kay Byer, was an American poet, essayist and teacher who died in 2017 at the age of 72. She was State poet of North Carolina for five years until 2009 and published six collections of poetry, including 2002’s Catching Light, in which this poem appeared. &q...

This is Episode 104 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Blessings" by Francis Harvey. Francis Harvey was an Irish poet who died at the age of 89 in 2014. Born on the UK side of the Irish border in County Fermanagh, he lived most of his life in the Republic of Ireland, in County Donegal, just a handful of miles away. He was a member of Aosdána, an Irish association which...

This is Episode 103 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "The Singers" by Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland was an Irish poet who died in 2020 at the age of 75. She taught at Stanford University professor for the last 25 years of her life. "The Singers" came to some prominence when Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland, quoted the last line in her histori...

This is Episode 102 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World", by Jane Hirshfield. Jane Hirshfield an American poet, essayist, and translator. She has published 12 collections since 1982 and served as Chanceller of the Academy of American Poets between 2012 and 2017. She is in many ways a poet of science—her works touch on...

This is Episode 101 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Anger" by Yusef Komunyakaa. Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet and at the time of this podcast, in his 82nd year, is still teaching at New York University, where he is Professor of English. He has published more than 15 collections of poetry and two collections of essays and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 19...

This is Episode 100 of Poems for the Speed of Life. For this milestone, a break from the regular type of episode. This podcast tries to give you an answer to the most important question we can ask about anything: Why? Why Poems for the Speed of Life? Why poetry in the first place? This show, referencing the work of Dr Iain McGilchrist, esteemed psychiatrist and the author of books The Master and h...

This is Episode 99 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Tent" by Pat Boran. Pat Boran is an Irish poet. He has published 10 collections since 1990, including two in 2022, plus two editions of Selected Poems. He is former Editor of Poetry Ireland Review and has been Director and Editor of the poetry publisher Dedalus Press since 2006. This poem, "Tent", speaks ab...

This is Episode 98 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's piece is "Color" by Tina Chang. Tina Chang is an American poet with a Taiwanese heritage. She has published three collections of poetry and co-edited the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. The poet laureate of Brooklyn, on taking up that role she described her mis...

This is Episode 97 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's piece is "Lift Every Voice and Sing" by James Weldon Johnson. James Weldon Johnson American writer, civil rights leader and activist born in 1871.  The son of an immigrant mother from the Caribbean, he devoted his work to helping the advancement of black people and became a prominent early member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity,...

This is Episode 96 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's piece is "This afternoon, burn down the house" by Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury was a celebrated American novelist and screenwriter who died in 2012 at the age of 91. He wrote fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery. Perhaps he is best known now for Fahrenheit 451 , a dystopian novel where books have been made into people a...

This is Episode 95 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "On the Death of the Beloved" by John O'Donohue. John O’Donohue was an Irish poet and Celtic spiritual teacher and leader whose death at the age of just 52 in 2008 is still much mourned by his legions of admirers and students. His brother Pat, reflecting on his life, said: "He was not a finite act that existe...

This is Episode 94 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "A Seeming Stillness" by David Whyte. David Whyte is an English poet whose work has drawn a phenomenal following in recent years. His work seems to have tapped into something vital in the world right now, something all of us hunger after, some deep and profound connection with the land beneath us, the air around us an...

This is Episode 93 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "On Friendship" by Kahlil Gibran. Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanon-born American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was educated in Beirut, Boston and Paris and during his lifetime considered himself to be mainly a painter. This piece, "On Friendship", is one of the most popular pieces in his most...