Poetry Unbound On Being Studios

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.

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.

A social worker holds a group for teenagers at a school. They only half pay attention to him. Then something happens, and they pay attention to each other.

Have you ever had a private moment — perhaps in the middle of the night — in a large city? When it just seems like it’s you and the great dreaming metropolis? Rowan Ricardo Phillips brings us into a memory he can’t forget, complete with a Wu-Tang Clan soundtrack.

In a poem of strict rhymes and old forms, Alexander Posey (1873-1908), a poet of the Creek Nation, poses challenges to pomposity.

In a church there are liturgies and prayers and statues. But in José Olivarez’s poem, there are more urgent things taking place, things that have “no time to wait.”