What’s it like to be owned by the world, to have populations claiming you, to have millions speaking on your behalf? Naomi Shihab Nye takes a close look — from a distance — at Jesus, and herself.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a professor of creative writing at Texas State University. From 2019-2021, Nye was the Young People's Poet Laureate through the Poetry Foundation. She is the author of You & Yours (BOA Editions 2005). Her more recent books include The Tiny Journalist (BOA Editions 2019), Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (Greenwillow Books 2022), Cast Away (HarperCollins 2020), and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (Greenwillow Books 2020). She received the 2019 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Order your copy of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our vibrant conversational space on Substack.

Quiet. Shhh. Softly. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t upset the authorities. Victoria Adukwei Bulley unquiets the quiet.

Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer, and artist. She is the author of Quiet (Faber Books 2022; Knopf 2023), which was shortlisted for the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize. Bulley is currently a doctoral student at the Royal Holloway, University of London.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

On the day you wake to a broken window in your car, what do you do? And what happens when the woman repairing that window offers a glimpse of something new?

Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York. He is the author of Dēmos (Milkweed 2021), Colonize Me (Saturnalia 2019), and Not Your Mama’s Melting Pot (University of Nebraska Press 2018). Naka-Hasebe Kingsley is an assistant professor of English at Kalamazoo College. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

When you move to a new place, everything seems different. Hell’s not hot anymore; it’s freezing. A poem of strangeness and wonder. 

Dan Vera is a writer, editor, watercolorist, and literary historian. Vera is the author of two books of poetry: Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press 2013) and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books 2008). His honors include the Oscar Wilde Award for Poetry (2017) and the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize (2012). 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Dan Vera’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

Who decides what’s self care and what isn’t? Who benefits? Who pays? Upon whom does the burden of self care rest? Solmaz Sharif excavates.

Solmaz Sharif is the author of Customs (Graywolf Press 2022) and Look (Graywolf Press 2016), and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, where she studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, and New York University. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, the New York Times, and others. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Arizona State University where she is inaugurating a Poetry for the People program.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Solmaz Sharif’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

Some friendships are built on small encounters and last a lifetime. Two women — from across culture, location, and age — spend a lifetime in communication. 

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American poet and writer. She is the author of Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (New Directions Publishing Corporation 2009), The Iraqi Nights (New Directions Publishing Corporation 2014), The Beekeeper (New Directions Publishing Corporation 2018), In Her Feminine Sign (New Directions Publishing Corporation 2019), and The Bird Tattoo (forthcoming from Pegasus Books 2022). She is a laureate of the UNESCO Sharja Prize for Arab Culture and has received fellowships from United States Artists, Guggenheim, and Kresge. Her honors also include the Arab American Book Award, and the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She currently works as a special lecturer of Arabic at Oakland University in Michigan.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Dunya Mikhail’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

At the hingepoint of change, a poet walks through the garden his late father planted. 

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer and visual artist. He is the author of two poetry collections: Ubasute (Slapering Hol Press 2021), which won the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition, and the full-length collection Common Grace (Beacon Press 2022). His honors include a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthologies.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Aaron Caycedo-Kimura’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

Firefighting pushes the body to breaking point; Kevin Goodan’s poem locates the “ash-dark art” of firefighting not just in the wilderness where the team worked, but in the muscles of the firefighters. 

Kevin Goodan was born in Montana and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation where his stepfather and brothers are tribal members. Goodan earned his BA from the University of Montana and worked as a firefighter for ten years with the U.S. Forest Service before receiving his MFA from University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2004. He has taught at the University of Connecticut and has served as Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University. He is author of Spot Weather Forecast (Alice James Books 2021), Anaphora (Alice James Books 2018), Let the Voices (Red Hen Press 2016), and Upper Level Disturbances (Center for Literary Publishing 2012).

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Kevin Goodan’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

Sometimes leaving feels like you’re splitting yourself in two, but you leave anyway. What compels us? What holds us together even as we look back? David Whyte’s poem combines pain and promise as someone is both departing and venturing at the same time. 

David Whyte is the author of many books of poetry and prose. He grew up with a strong, imaginative influence from his Irish mother among the hills and valleys of his father’s Yorkshire. He now makes his home in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. He holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has worked as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands. His books include The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, and The Bell and the Blackbird. His latest collections are David Whyte: Essentials and Still Possible.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer David Whyte’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.

What is the landscape that has most influenced you? When do you go there? In person? Andrés N. Ordorica goes in dreams. 

Andrés N. Ordorica is a queer Latinx writer based in Edinburgh. His writing attempts to map the journey of his diasporic experience and unpack what it means to be from ni de aquí, ni de allá. His writing has been published widely and he regularly features at festivals around the UK. He is the recipient of a Second Life grant through the Edwin Morgan Trust. In 2021, his fiction manuscript was shortlisted for both the Morley Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour and the Mo Siewcharran Prize. He is the author of the poetry collection, At Least This I Know.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Andrés N. Ordorica’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Pre-order the forthcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our new conversational space on Substack.