Poems for the Speed of Life

This is Episode 41 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Go to the Limits of Your Longing", by Rainer Maria Rilke. You can read the poem here . Rainer Maria Rilke was a poet who came from the old Austro-Hungarian empire which existed until the end of World War I. He was a near contemporary of Friedrich Nietzsche, both men wrote in German, and it’s said that they even, 15 or 20 years apart, fe...

This is Episode 40 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Up", by Margaret Atwood. You can read the poem here . Margaret Atwood is a legendary and prolific novelist, essayist, poet and activist from Canada. She has published more than 50 books, including the 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a dystopian future and which has been made into a hugely successful TV series in recent years. Thi...

This is Episode 39 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Snow", by Vladimir Holan, translated from the Czech by Ian and Jarmila Milner. You can read the poem here . Vladimir Holan was a Czech poet who lived and died in the country during the upheaval, war, torment and genocide of the 20th century. Czechoslovakia was caught between the fascism of Nazi Germany and the communism of Soviet Russia...

This is Episode 38 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "The Bell and the Blackbird", by David Whyte You can read the poem here . You are also invited to listen to the author recite the poem aloud, in his own unique and powerful way, here . David Whyte is an English poet whose work has drawn a phenomenal following in recent years. His work seems to tap into something vital in the world right...

This is Episode 37 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Leaving the Empty Room", by Stephen Dunn You can read the poem here . Stephen Dunn was an American poet, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, who died in 2021 at the age of 82.  His subject matter was the normal everyday triumphs and tragedies, disappointments and despairs, and his style was described as easygoing and conversational, wh...

This is Episode 36 of Poems to Live Well By. As with every poem on this podcast, the introductions here are only introductions. You are encouraged to listen to the poem, and to read it, and to allow it to speak to you however it does. Perhaps fitting for today, February 1st, St Brigid’s Day, we have a female poet with both a strong Irish background and strong feminist philosophies.  British P...

Perhaps best known for “Stepping Stones”, his book-length collection of interviews with his friend Seamus Heaney, Dennis O’Driscoll was a respected poet in his own right, publishing nine collections before his death at the age of 58 at Christmas 2012 (just a few months before Heaney also passed away).  O’Driscoll was a so-called “office poets”, one of those poets who worked their whole lives...

This is Episode 30 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is “The Journey” by Mary Oliver.  Mary Oliver, who died in January 2019, was a beloved American poet whose simple lines, crafted out of the natural world and our place within it, always bring powerful pictures to our minds and empowering encouragement to our hearts. [This is the second time a Mary Oliver poem features on this podcast....

This is Episode 33 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is A Piper by Seumas O’Sullivan. Seumas O’Sullivan was an Irish poet and literary editor whose work covered the turbulent first half of the 20th century in Ireland, decades of uprising and independence, of civil war and the growing pains of a new country.  He was well acquainted with the Irish literary scene, being friends with — and s...

This is Episode 32 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is “Do Not Be Ashamed” by Wendell Berry. Wendell Berry is an American poet who has published more than 30 collections from 1964 to the present. His work was described by Andrew Angyal, a professor of English and environmental studies, as having “a commitment to the reality and primacy of the actual world”, a world where “nothing exists for...

This is Episode 31 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is Landmarks by Breda Wall Ryan, an Irish writer and poet who deserves wider attention. She has published two collections of poetry , In a Hare’s Eye and Raven Mothers . Her poems are full of powerful imagery, and she often brings the lives of women into sharp focus. This poem, “Landmarks”, is a poem about place and memory and the connectio...

This is Episode 30 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is not, strictly, a poem. But some of the greatest poetry has always been written by songwriters. The boundary between song and poetry is a flimsy one, and just because these words are better known in song does not mean they don’t contain every essence of poetry too. Today’s poem, or song, is “The Best Day of my Life” by Tom Odell and Lauri...

This is Episode 29 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Spring and All", by William Carlos Williams You can read the poem here . John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, wrote a well-received book called Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide recently. There’s a conversation between Cleese and Iain McGilchrist , who has been both a practising psychiatrist and literary professor, and who has writte...

This is Episode 28 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins. You can read the poem here . Billy Collins is an American poet, formerly New York State poet and Poet Laureate of the United States in the early 2000s. He has published 17 collections.  This poem, "Forgetfulness" is lighthearted, but as serious as it gets too, as it considers the processing of agein...

This is Episode 27 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is "Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward", by Anne Sexton, You can read the poem here . Anne Sexton was an American poet. She struggled with mental illness for much of her life, underwent extensive psychoanalysis treatment and therapy, and took her own life at the age of 45 in 1974. Her poetry is raw. Indeed, she started to write as a therape...

This is Episode 26 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is “Weakness” by Alden Nowlan. You can read the poem here . Alden Nowlan was a Canadian poet, who died at the age of just 50 in 1983. He was taken out of school at the age of just 10 as his family saw academic education as a waste of time, but he soon discovered the power of reading and hitchhiked 20 miles every weekend for books. It was a...

This is Episode 25 of Poems to Live Well By. Today’s poem is “Rain” by Edward Thomas. You can read the poem here . TS Eliot once said that poetry communicates before it’s understood. I encourage you, with every poem on this podcast, to let it speak to you how it speaks. However it lands for you, let it land. The poem may seem at first reading to be excessively downbeat—about solitude, about suffer...

This is Episode 24 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "I Went into the Maverick Bar", by Gary Snyder Gary Snyder was associated with the “Beat” generation of the 1950s (which included the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg). He has been described as “the poet laureate of deep ecology”, and his work has long been immersed in an appreciation of Buddhist spirituality and the natural worl...

This is Episode 23 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "In Broken Images", by Robert Graves. Robert Graves was a prolific writer who worked through much of the 20th century. He fought in the First World War (and was seriously injured in the Battle of the Somme) and lived to the age of 90. This poem is about the will to knowledge, about misplaced confidence, and about the danger of being cert...

This is Episode 22 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "spring is like a perhaps hand", by ee cummings. With no titles and no (or strange) punctuation, the poetry of E.E. Cummings (often written as "ee cummings") is often shocking or at least disconcerting when we first encounter it on the page. This can become an obstacle to the enjoyment of the work.  When read aloud, though, those is...

This is Episode 21 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "The World as Meditation", by Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens inhabited that halfway zone where maybe more and more of us find ourselves now: between the practical world of work and business, and the other world of spirituality and the mind. As a writer, his work made him a hero for a century of poets, but his day to day was as a legal...

This is Episode 20 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "Toward the Solstice", by Adrienne Rich. Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist, who has been described as “one of the most widely influential writers of the second half of the 20th century”. This poem “Toward the Solstice”, takes as its starting point two dates: the end of November and the end of May, as the world tur...

This is Episode 19 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "And Death Shall Have No Dominion", by Dylan Thomas. It's a poem about life, death and immortality, written by the poet when he was still in his teens. You can read the poem here . Music Credit: Once Upon a Time by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

This is Episode 18 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "Thirteen" by Kae Tempest. It's a poem about the differences in world, and worldview, and possibilities, that seem to be available to boys and to girls. You can read the poem here . Music Credit: Once Upon a Time by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

This is Episode 17 of Poems to Live Well By. Today's poem is "Beannacht" by John O'Donohue. It's O'Donohue's life-affirming variation on old Irish blessings, which could bring hope to a dark day. You can read the poem here . You can also hear the late poet read "Beannacht" himself here on the podcast of the On Being Project . Music Credit: Once Upon a Time by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/...