This episode isn’t about poetry but about another kind of art: the art of conflict resolution. In a deeply practical conversation, Pádraig Ó Tuama sits down with Columbia University’s Peter Coleman, author of The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization and an expert in constructive conflict. Coleman shares advice for “the exhausted middle majority” — the large number of Americans fed up with our divided politics — on how to engage with others in ways that lead to openness and learning. He also talks about the surprising power of taking a walk with your challenger, the limitations of bringing together people from both sides, and the three factors that matter most when handling conflict.

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.

Peter Coleman is a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University. He is an expert in constructive conflict resolution and sustainable peace, and he's particularly interested in how people can face and work with the conflicts of their lives and think about the systems of conflict we're in. He serves as the director of the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution and is the author of many books, including The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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“Politics by themselves are necessary but not sufficient … [and] poetry by itself is necessary but not sufficient. We must find a way to bring them together,” says Martín Espada, a poet and professor. With crystalline language, an all-seeing gaze, and innate musicality, he writes poems that show us the world and people as they are — sometimes violent, vicious, unjust, but also tender, tenacious, courageous. In this potent conversation recorded for the 2026 Greenbelt Festival in Kettering, England, he reads from his work, and he and Pádraig Ó Tuama discuss the resistance he’s met when mixing politics and poetry, his parents as influences and teachers, and how his writing (and editing) have changed over time.

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.

Martín Espada was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He has written more than 20 books of poetry and nonfiction and translation. His collection Floaters won the National Book Award for Poetry, and he is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His most recent collection is Jailbreak of Sparrows.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

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After actor, dialect coach, and teacher Amanda Quaid was diagnosed with a serious illness in 2021, she responded by trying something new — she wrote poetry. She says, “I was looking for an art form that allowed me to be with uncertainty in a beautiful way.” The result is a captivating memoir-in-poetry, No Obvious Distress, that uses words and phrases from her medical charts to create verse that rings with laughter, tears, and truth. In this conversation recorded at New York City’s Morgan Library & Museum, Amanda reads from her book, and she and Pádraig Ó Tuama talk about the three principles that guided her through illness, her parenting a young child through this time, and her work with medical students, actors, and CEOs.

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.

Amanda Quaid was raised in New York City, where she works as a dialect coach. She also teaches at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. After working in theatre for most of her life, Amanda began writing poetry as a way to work creatively with illness. Her debut collection, No Obvious Distress, is out now with John Murray Press and was named Memoir of the Month and one of the best books of 2025 by the British newspaper The Independent.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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