Poems for the Speed of Life

This is Episode 66 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Antidotes to Fear of Death" by Rebecca Elson. Rebecca Elson died in 1999 at the age of just 39, ten years after she was first diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  As well as writing poetry, she was a scientist, studying astronomy at Cambridge University and being among the first researchers to view images of space from the Hubbl...

This is Episode 65 of Poems for the Speed of Life.  Today's poem is "The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog" by Robert Bly. Robert Bly was an American writer, poet, essayist and men’s groups leader who died in 2021 at the age of 94. He is perhaps best known now for his bestselling prose book Iron John , a study of the male experience and role through old myths and stories.  This poe...

Poetry can make us see things differently: ourselves, the world, ourselves in the world.  This is Episode 64 of Poems for the Speed of Life. I hope that this podcast each weekday morning helps to give you some slight, subtle, but powerful shift of perspective, wherever you are in the world.  Today's poem is "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert. Jack Gilbert was an American poet who died...

This is Episode 63 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "The Way It Is" by William Stafford. Steve Jobs, the legendary founder of Apple Computers, once said, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatev...

This is Episode 62 of Poems for the Speed of Life. As with every poem on this podcast, feel free to disregard or forget entirely about my introduction. If the poem says something specific or different to you, go with it wherever it leads.  Today's poem is "Bread" by Moya Cannon. Moya Cannon is an Irish poet. She was born and grew up in Donegal and lived for almost 30 years in Galway, she is g...

This is Episode 61 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Bluebird" by Charles Bukowski. Welcome to today’s short episode of Poems for the Speed of Life, a daily podcast that brings you one poem each weekday morning, and tries to bring you some of its power too. As with today’s poem and all the others, you are free to ignore introduction. If the poem says something specific or different...

This is Episode 60 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Clearing" by Martha Postlethwaite. Welcome to today’s short episode of Poems for the Speed of Life, a daily podcast that brings you one poem each weekday morning, and tries to bring you some of its power too. As with today’s poem and all the others, you are free to ignore introduction. If the poem says something specific or differ...

This is Episode 59 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Integrity", by Adrienne Rich. Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She published more than 20 collections in her lifetime: her first in her early 20s in 1951 and her last, well over half a century later, in 2010, just two years before her death at the age of 82. TS Eliot said that genuine poetry can communica...

This is Episode 58 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "The Art of Disappearing", by Naomi Shihab Nye. Naomi Shihab Nye is an American poet and songwriter who was born in 1952. Born in the US, she moved with her Palestinian father to the West Bank as a teenager but the family had to flee after the Six-Day War in 1967.  A four-time Pushcart Prize winner, Nye has published more than...

This is Episode 57 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "If—", by Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling was an Indian-born British poet. Maybe best known now for “The Jungle Book”, his novel that became a classic Disney film, he is the youngest ever winner of the Nobel prize in literature, which he was awarded in 1907 at the age of 42.  More than a century later, his legacy has often be...

This is Episode 56 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Begin" by Brendan Kennelly. Brendan Kennelly was an Irish poet who died in 2021 at the age of 85. A contemporary of Seamus Heaney, he was for many years in Ireland perhaps better loved than his countryman, owing as much as anything to his regular popular appearances on the television programme The Late Late Show, where he regaled...

This is Episode 55 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Things to live for when the world seems hopeless", by Nikita Gill. Nikita Gill is a British-Indian poet who has won a large and loyal audience in recent years through her use of social media.  At the time of this recording (in February 2023) she has more 650,000 followers on Instagram, more than 130,000 on Twitter, and her wo...

This is Episode 54 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's episode is a first for this show, as it includes two poems: "Digging" and "Follower", both by Seamus Heaney. I felt like these two poems deserved to be read and heard and experienced together. Both “Digging” and “Follower” were included in Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist , in 1966.  The central thrust of both poems is...

This is Episode 53 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "When I set out for Lyonnesse" by Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy was an English writer who lived and worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  He was an exceptional novelist, with enduring classics such as Far From The Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles . Less well known as a poet during his lifetime, he neverthe...

This is Episode 52 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "A Blessing" by James Wright. James Wright was an American poet, who was so sensitive to the world around him that his mental health suffered for much of his life.  His Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972, and his work has influenced a generation of writers, including Mary Oliver, and you might be able to hear some...

This is Episode 51 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today's poem is "Munich, Winter 1973 (for Y.S.)" by James Baldwin James Baldwin was an American essayist, novelist, playwright and poet who died in 1987.  His writing often captured the dual complexity of African-American experience and homosexuality: Baldwin was a gay black man, who left the US in his early 20s to live and work in France, in...

This is Episode 50 of the podcast. Sincere thank you to everyone who has listened over these past two months, and thanks also to you this is your first time listening to the podcast. To leave a review: On Spotify. Open the Spotify app (iOS or Android), find the show and tap to rate five-stars. ( Details here ) On Apple. Open your Apple Podcasts app, find the show and tap to rate five-stars. ( Deta...

This is Episode 49 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today’s poem is "Entirely", by Louis MacNeice. Louis MacNeice was a British-Irish poet who was born in Belfast in the early 1900s, was educated from the age of 10 in England, attended Oxford Univeristy and died in London in the 1960s at the age of 55.  In his life he is said to have felt always as an outsider — he was an Irishman in Engl...

This is Episode 48 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today’s poem is "Mirrors", by IN-Q. In-Q is the stage name of Adam Schmalholz, an American spoken word performer, songwriter and poet.  He has delivered powerful talks from the TED stage and is a co-creator of Da Poetry Lounge, one of the world’s largest open mic poetry events held weekly at the Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles. As...

This is Episode 47 of Poems for the Speed of Life. Today’s poem is "Shadow and Light Source Both" by Rumi. Jalal ad-Din Muhummad Rumi, commonly known in English simply as Rumi, was a 13th century teacher, philosopher, mystic, Islamic scholar, and poet.  At such a remove of time, language and place — how much resemblance, really, does modern day America or Australia or Ireland bear to Ara...

This is Episode 46 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Why Pray" by Matthew McConaughey. Matthew McConaughey is an actor, star of blockbuster movies such as Magic Mike, Interstellar and Dallas Buyers Club, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor in 2014. This poem, "Why Pray?", is an entry in Greenlights , his widely acclaimed and bestselling autobiography, or memoir, or waking dream, or —...

This is Episode 45 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem, "The West Coast of Clare" by Andy Irvine, is actually a song. It’s the second song lyric to feature on this podcast—you can find "The Best Day of My Life" by Tom Odell and Laurie Blundell in Episode 30 here , or by searching or scrolling in your podcast player. It’s also the second time that the west coast of county Clare, on Ireland’s Atl...

This is Episode 44 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Mirror in February", by Thomas Kinsella. You can read the poem here . Thomas Kinsella was an Irish poet, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 93. Although relatively little known outside Ireland, he has been compared favourably to his Nobel-winning Irish countryman Seamus Heaney. ( One reviewer in the LA Times in 2006 expressed the vie...

This is Episode 43 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Woodland Burial", by Pam Ayres You can read the poem here . Pam Ayres is an English broadcaster, comedian and poet who has become a firm favourite of legions of listeners to her many shows and appearances on BBC radio.  She taps into a shared desire for humour, for our need to go through serious things but to bring to them whatever...

This is Episode 42 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Praise of a Man", by Norman MacCaig You can read the poem here . Norman MacCaig was a Scottish poet whose life spanned most of the 20th century. He spent all his life in Scotland, first working as a primary school teacher before finishing his career in academia, teaching creative writing at the University of Edinburgh. This poem, “In Pr...