Celebrating the Spoken Word: "Digging" (Seamus Heaney)

Seamus Heaney, who died in 2013, was considered the greatest Irish poet since William Butler Yeats. I first heard him on BBC Radio when I was teaching English at Hong Kong Baptist College in the early 1980s. In the video below, he reads his poem, "Digging."

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Celebrating the Spoken Word: Rumi and the Mystery that Cannot Be Said

Coleman Barks has been a primary translator/interpreter of the poetry of the 13th-century Persian poet, Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi. Here we have three short poems from Barks' translation which he recites with musical accompaniment. He also offers a brief commentary on how Rumi's poetry is understood "with some deeper part of our being."

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Celebrating the Spoken Word: What the Mirror Said (Lucille Clifton)

Comedian Bill Murray has been a long-time supporter of poetry. Here he reads a poem by African American poet, Lucille Clifton, "What the Mirror Said."

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