Twice a week, the Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama reads, reflects upon and then re-reads a poem. The poems are drawn from classics to contemporary.
Structure and features
Each episode is available to listen to via podcast and website. From the website, each episode is downloadable and has a full transcript.
The current season includes:
- Leanne O'Sullivan – a poem in gratitude for health care workers
- Emily Dickinson – a poem for how friendship endures
- Raymond Antrobus – a poem about when we’re disbelieved
- Patrick Kavanagh – a poem about the beauty of home
- Ali Cobby Eckermann – a poem for keeping memory alive
- Kei Miller – a poem for letting yourself be
- Lemn Sissay – a poem to see what’s overlooked
- Joy Harjo – a poem for all that life brings
- Ross Gay – a poem to notice openings and closings
- Allison Funk – a poem for complicated stories of love
- Jane Mead – a poem on the importance of names
- Ocean Vuong – a poem for tenderness in the face of violence
- Tracy K. Smith – a poem for the space between us
- Marie Howe – a poem for what comes with age
- Faisal Mohyuddin – a poem for ritual and reset
- Aimee Nezhukumatathil – a poem about what grounds you
- Brad Aaron Modlin – a poem for what you learn alone.
For students and families
Students:
- follow your teacher’s advice about which poems to use
- use the poems as part of an independent poetry study.
Family members can support students by listening to the poems and talking personally about the ideas expressed.
For teachers
Integrate poems into the program as:
- test analysis and response to individual poems
- comparative analysis of 'Poetry unbound' as an anthology
- online interactive oral tasks
- transformational tasks
- text production tasks.
Teacher notes
Focus areas
- Poetry
- Contemporary poetry
- Personal response
- Interpretive response
- Intertextuality
- Text in context
- Literature.
Curriculum links
- Australian Curriculum year 10 English
- SACE English
- Language, literacy and literature strands
- Text analysis
- Text production.
Assessment
No assessment lessons or plans are provided by the site. Teachers should integrate the materials into their current assessment plans.