Poetry Unbound

We are delighted to offer this extended conversation between host Pádraig Ó Tuama and the poet Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe. Together, they take a deep dive into the story and language of her poem "Blue," featured in Season 7 of Poetry Unbound, as well as Sasha's beginnings in poetry.

Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe is the author of Rose Quartz. She is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribes. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Red Paint, and holds a double MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Yellow Medicine Review, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. She lives in Tacoma, Washington.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Listen to our episode featuring Sasha’s poem “Blue,” and stay connected with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

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In a poem that explores a story of a name, a story of a color, a story of a sound, a story of an identity, a the story of a person — we hear of ancestors, childhood innocences, exclusions, memories, sensualities, and the way that the dead are not always dead.

Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe is the author of Rose Quartz. She is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribes. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Red Paint, and holds a double MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Yellow Medicine Review, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. She lives in Tacoma, Washington.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season. Find the companion bonus episode in your feed, with Pádraig Ó Tuama in conversation with Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe.

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On one particular day, a poem places events alongside each other, the ordinariness of each event casting the other events into light and shade.

Charif Shanahan is the author of two collections of poetry: Trace Evidence: Poems (Tin House, 2023) and Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry/SIU Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award. His work has been supported by a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship; a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University; and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Grant to Morocco. Originally from the Bronx, he is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Northwestern University, where he teaches poetry in the undergraduate and Litowitz MFA+MA graduate creative writing programs.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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

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Why do we do the things we do when we’re young? Brenda Cárdenas recalls nights sneaking out of the house as a teenager, looking for highs, looking for company. “Why would you do that?” is the adult question throughout the poem. “Why wouldn’t I?” is a reply.

Brenda Cárdenas is the author of the poetry collection Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023). Cárdena’s works include Boomerang (Bilingual Press, 2009), the chapbook Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors (Decentralized Publications, 2011), co-authored with her husband Roberto Harrison, and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone (Momotombo Press, 2005). She also co-edited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017) and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (MARCH/Abrazo Press, 2001). She has served as faculty for the CantoMundo writers’ retreat and as Milwaukee Poet Laureate. She currently teaches creative writing and Latinx literature at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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

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An item of clothing — the blouse of a grandmother — is praised for its artistry, is remembered for how it sits on the body. And then, having been lost, is remade, refined, and reimagined on a new body that recalls the bodies of women of previous generations.

Nithy Kasa is a Dublin-based poet of Congolese origin. Published in poetry magazines such as Poetry Ireland Review and anthologies like Dedalus Press’s Writing Home: The New Irish Poets, her work can also be found in the archive of the University of Galway and University College Dublin special collections. Her debut collection of poetry, Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho (Doire Press, 2022), was listed among the top poetry books of 2022 by The Irish Times.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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

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What might have been? A poet recalls flirtations and electric connections that could have led to a different life.

Selina Nwulu is a writer of Nigerian heritage who is based in London. Her poetry and essays have been widely featured in a variety of journals, short films, and anthologies, including the critically-acclaimed anthology New Daughters of Africa. Her first chapbook collection, The Secrets I Let Slip, was published in 2015 by Burning Eye Books and is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She has toured her poetry extensively, both internationally and throughout the U.K. in a number of cultural institutions. She has also been featured in Vogue, ES Magazine, i-D, and Blavity, among others. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Greek, and Polish, and exhibited in Warsaw, New York, Dublin, and Glasgow. She was the Young Poet Laureate for London in 2015-16, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist for the 2021 U.K. Arts Award for Environmental Writing. A Little Resurrection is her debut full-length collection. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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

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If you had to make a self portrait of your daily morning routine through language and sensation, what would you include? John Lee Clark offers memories of a birthday through experiences the body holds.

John Lee Clark is a DeafBlind poet, essayist, historian, translator, and an actor in the Protactile movement. He is the author of the poetry collection How to Communicate (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022) and the essay collection Where I Stand (Handtype Press, 2014). Clark is a 2021-2023 Bush Leadership Fellow, a core member of Protactile Language Interpreting National Education Center, and a research consultant with the Reciprocity Lab at the University of Chicago.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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

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A memory from childhood is viewed through the lens of the Malaysian poetic form of pantoum. New things emerge when lines break and reform with new associations.

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ napper. They are the winner of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, a 2022 recipient of a Tin House Next Book residency, and a recipient of a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship Award at MacDowell. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Magazine, Literary Hub, them, The Advocate, Al Jazeera, NYLON, Vogue, The Rumpus, The Lily, The Maine Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. For more information, visit kaybarrett.net or find them on social media at @brownroundboi.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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

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If you could put a lock of your hair under a microscope, what would it contain? DNA certainly, but here in dg nanouk okpik’s poem, the hair also contains memory, smell, location, disease, dreams, and medicine.

dg nanouk okpik is Iñupiat-Inuit from Alaska. Her first book, Corpse Whale (University of Arizona Press, 2012), won the American Book Award and May Sarton Award. okpik was long-listed for the PEN American Award for Blood Snow (Wave Books, 2022). She is a Lannan Fellow with the Institute of American Indian Arts. okpik resides in Santa Fe, NM.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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

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Pádraig reflects on the transformative force of poetry, and Krista joins with an invitation to pay tribute to the ongoing work of Poetry Unbound.

Make a gift and learn more at onbeing.org/LoveUs.

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