“It had to involve more than just a slim volume of verse,” says Kimberly Campanello about MOTHERBABYHOME, her ongoing visual poetry project which centers the 796 infants and children who died at the St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, in the west of Ireland, between 1926 and 1961. So it consists of 796 sheets of vellum with text from archival and contemporary sources that she’s shaped into a work that blends documentation and lamentation, reportage and rite. In this Zoom conversation between Kimberly and Pádraig Ó Tuama — part two of two — recorded in 2025, Kimberly reads an excerpt from MOTHERBABYHOME, and then she and Pádraig discuss whether all poets want to be priests and how poetry is the ultimate DIY activity. Or, as Kimberly puts it, “You don't have to learn an instrument to be a poet.”

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Kimberly Campanello is a poet, translator, and performance artist. Her most recent projects are the poetry collection An Interesting Detail, the novel Use the Words You Have, and MOTHERBABYHOME. She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.

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“It's about seeing, through reading, whether where you are going has been or is now or will be written, or not.” This deliciously twisty line is from Kimberly Campanello’s ongoing versioning of Dante’s Inferno, and as in that sentence, she is translating and reconfiguring the 700-year-old work of poetry to reflect her life, her family’s lives, your life, our life, and, indeed, our lives today. We are delighted to bring you this exhilarating conversation — part one of two — between Kimberly and Pádraig Ó Tuama that was recorded over Zoom in 2025. In addition to reading excerpts from her redone Dante, she and Pádraig talk about the English teacher who made an indelible impression on her, the roles of love and time in the Inferno, and how an early-onset Parkinson’s diagnosis has shaped her thinking and writing.

We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Kimberly Campanello's recent projects are the poetry collection An Interesting Detail, the novel Use the Words You Have, and MOTHERBABYHOME. She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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“Poetry should be horrifying,” says Rachel Mann. “It should be … on the edge of the edge of what could be said.” We are delighted to bring you this vibrant conversation featuring Rachel and Yomi Ṣode speaking with Pádraig Ó Tuama at the 2024 StAnza Poetry Festival in Scotland. Rachel and Yomi each read poems, and then go on to discuss grace, who receives it, and who deserves it; the place of grief and remembrance in their work; and how writing about historical figures is a way to disrupt and re-vision both the past and the present.

We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Rachel Mann is a priest, writer, and broadcaster. Her second poetry collection, Eleanor Among the Saints, was published by Carcanet in January of 2024.

Yomi Ṣode is an award-winning Nigerian-British writer. His debut poetry collection, Manorism, was published by Penguin in October of 2022.

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From a young age, says Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah, “I had such a fascination with the way the alphabet makes music in the mind.” We are thrilled to offer this thoughtful conversation between Pádraig and Fady, recorded when Fady received the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize. Fady reads several poems — including two with the same name! — and speaks of how memory, time, history, faith, love, violence, and difference figure in his work. He says, “Ultimately for my existence as a Palestinian in the 20th or 21st century … I am also always, particularly in English, bridging a gap.”

We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Fady Joudah is the author of six collections of poems and has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic. He is the editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and his most recent collection, [ … ], was published in 2024 by Milkweed Editions. This interview was recorded on the occasion of him receiving the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize.

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“I still have the best three-point shot of any Canadian poet born before 1943” is one of the first things that acclaimed poet Don McKay says in this expansive and intimate exchange. We are thrilled to offer this conversation between Padraig and Don, recorded from a virtual interview held on the occasion of Don receiving the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Poetry Prizes. After touching on his early devotion to basketball, Don speaks of his lifelong passion for geology and birds, how Newfoundland is considered “opera for geologists”, and why he favors membership over mastery when it comes to relating to Earth’s other living creatures.

We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Don McKay has published 10 previous works of poetry. He's been shortlisted twice for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and in 2024 won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Poetry Prizes. He lives in Newfoundland, Canada.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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Host Pádraig Ó Tuama shares “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, a favorite childhood poem of his, and offers an audio postscript to Season 10 of Poetry Unbound. Later in 2026, he will bring us more Poetry Unbound to look forward to — find out what and when here. In the meantime, you can listen to past episodes of Poetry Unbound or to new episodes of On Being with Krista Tippett, out now.

We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Walter de la Mare was born on April 25, 1873, in London. He is the author of numerous books, including The Veil and Other Poems (Constable & Company, 1921) and The Listeners (Constable & Company, 1912). He died on June 22, 1956, in Twickenham, England.

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Have you ever watched, in awe, as a skilled gymnast or skater lifts off and completes a dizzying number of revolutions in less than a second before landing safely back down? That’s how you may feel upon reading the great Leonard Cohen’s urgent, dreamlike poem “I, 8” from Book of Mercy. In his telling of a man’s fall “from his high place” into “disgrace”, Cohen sends us on a short, 206-word journey that seamlessly weaves together narration, fiction, meditation, devotion, and prayer.

We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Leonard Cohen had an artistic career that began in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies. He published two novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers, and 10 books of poetry, most recently Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs and Book of Longing. During a recording career that spanned almost 50 years, he released 14 studio albums, the last of which, You Want It Darker, was released in 2016. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize in 2011. He died on November 7, 2016.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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Will you leave this episode feeling uplifted, envious, curious, or something else entirely? Yes. Billy-Ray Belcourt’s poem “Subarctica” transports you to a vividly specific time — “the coldest December / on record, I haven’t left my mother’s / house in over a week” — where the primary view is of poplars in “a tiny schoolyard”. Amid the simplicity and snow, the speaker shifts their perspective, seeing beyond their past and towards the wonder in their present and in what is to come.

We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is the author of six books, including the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning debut This Wound Is a World. Belcourt serves as the Canada Research Chair in Queer Indigenous Cultural Production at the University of British Columbia and also edits poetry for Hazlitt.

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