Hi, friends, I've got some news for you. I've got two books coming out in early 2025.

44 poems on being with each other is a poetry-unbound collection with 44 poems and 44 essays.

There's poems from Jericho Brown and Mary Oliver and Lucille Clifton in there.

And I have a collection of my own poems coming out too. It's called Kitchen Hymns.

You can pre-order these wherever you get your books,

online bookshops, or even better, your local bookshop.

There's more info at poetry unbound.org.

Thanks, friends.

My name is Podre Gautuma,

and a number of years ago,

I was at a poetry reading in England,

and the British Poet Laureate at the time, Carol And Duffy, was reading some of her poems. And she said in the middle of her

reading, I don't believe in God, but one of the things that I think I'd love if I did believe in

God was the sense that I was being listened to. And then she looked around and she said, that's why I like poetry.

And I loved what she said.

I thought it was such an elevation of what it is we're hoping that can happen

when we turn to a poem or write a poem,

that somehow we're hoping that the page will listen, even if nobody else hears or sees or reads a poem, that somehow we're hoping that the page will listen,

even if nobody else hears or sees or reads this poem,

that somehow there can be a listening back and forth

between the person writing and themselves

as they're in conversation with the words as they emerge on the page.

...