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 a captive national audience with his energy and wit and eyes that seemed to attract everyone who looked into them.

He published more than 50 collections between 1959 and 2013. This poem, “Begin”, was the title poem of his 1999 collection. Perhaps written in part to mark the attitude of stepping into the new millennium, it can equally be viewed as a daily encouragement to look around us at where we are, and no matter where we find ourselves, to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and just start again anew.

You can read the poem here

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