About the Podcast

Our podcast, One Poem a Day Won’t Kill You, returns for its annual month-long season this April! A podcasting partnership between the Desmond-Fish Public Library and the Highlands Current, a new episode is released each day during National Poetry Month, featuring community members in Philipstown, NY and Beacon, NY reading their favorite poems.

You can listen to the current season of One Poem a Day Won’t Kill You wherever you get your podcasts – on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Audible, and many more platforms. Previous years’ episodes can be accessed for free here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To be considered, simply drop by the library and ask to read! A librarian can assist you in recording your poem in our pop-up recording booth. If you would prefer to record from home, you may email us an audio recording of yourself reading the poem. (Not sure how to do that? We’ve made this helpful video.)

Readers may be of any age –– kids, teens, and adults are all welcome to read! Poems must be previously published works that are not of the reader’s own creation. 

2022

April 1, 2022 – “Ballad of the Harp-Weaver” by Edna St Vincent Millay, read by Cathy Lilburne
April 2, 2022 – “Mum With Sword” by Jack Nicholls, read by Matt Clifton
April 3, 2022 – “Sky Seasoning” by Shel Silverstein, read by Veronica Morgan
April 4, 2022 – “The Guppy” by Ogden Nash, read by Beth Vardy
April 5, 2022 – “He Heard the Newsboys Shouting ‘Europe! Europe!’” by Delmore Schwartz, read by Hannah Brooks
April 6, 2022 – “The Crocodile” by Lewis Carroll, read by Tabitha Biracree
April 7, 2022 – “Death of Marilyn Monroe” by Sharon Olds, read by Margo Stever
April 8, 2022 – “Marilyn and You” by Alan Jenkins, read by Susana Case
April 9, 2022 – “We Lived Happily During the War” by Ilya Kaminsky, read by Sarah Crow
April 10, 2022 – “December 30th, 2021” read by Joan Turner
April 11, 2022 – Three Poems by Ukrainian Poets, read by Priscilla Goldfarb
April 12, 2022 – “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou, read by Reeya Banerjee
April 13, 2022 – “Saltwater” by Finn Butler, read by Meredith Caraher
April 14, 2022 – “This is the Blue Ox” by Erica Funkhauser, read by Anita Prentice
April 15, 2022 – “If This Is True, Then What Else Is?” by Trenton Pollard, read by Michael Zimmer
April 16, 2022 – “Bleezer’s Ice Cream” by Jack Prelutsky, read by Matilda Hoffman
April 17, 2022 – “So Long As There’s Weather” By Tamara Kitt, read by Ida Hoffman
April 18, 2022 – “My Baby Brother” By Jack Prelutsky, Read By Annabel Hoffman
April 19, 2022 – “When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver, read by Davis McCallum
April 20, 2022 – “Mango” By Galway Kinnell, Read By Audrey Keller
April 21, 2022 – “The Naming of Cats” by TS Eliot, read by Tania Steele
April 22, 2022 – “Nostalgia” by Billy Collins, read by Maxwell Schoenstein
April 23, 2022 – “Discrepancies” by Stephen Dunn, read by Caroline Eisner
April 24, 2022 – “The Crocodile’s Toothache” by Shel Silverstein, read by Edie Giunta
April 25, 2022 – “The Race” by Chris Harris, read by Lafayette Starner
April 26, 2022 – “So Much to Admire” by Jeff Walt, read by Dede Farabaugh
April 27, 2022 – “Recovery” by Sheilah Rechtschaffer, read by Ryan Biracree
April 28, 2022 – “say it with your whole black mouth” by Danez Smith, read by Justice McCray
April 29, 2022 – “The Gate” by Marie Howe, read by Janice Soler
April 30, 2022 – “The Eagle” By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, read By Rachel Duran

2021

April 1, 2021 – “The Train Speaks” by Eve Ewing, read by Priscilla Goldfarb
April 2, 2021 – “Most Like An Arch This Marriage” by John Ciardi, read by Bevis Longstreth
April 3, 2021 – “Trombone” by Heller Levinson, read by the author
April 4, 2021 – “Morning Song” by Sylvia Plath, read by Sarah Crow
April 5, 2021 – “The End (Now We Are Six)” by A. A. Milne, read by Tabitha Biracree
April 6, 2021 – “Porch Swing in September” by Ted Kooser, read by Micah White
April 7, 2021 – “The Future Should Not Be Shared” by Robin Richardson, read by Meredith Caraher
April 8, 2021 – “Persimmon” by Anya Krugovoy Silver, read by Cristina Martin
April 9, 2021 – “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limon, read by Erin Giunta
April 10, 2021 – “Afterwards” by William Stafford, read by Matt Clifton
April 11, 2021 – “Hundreds of Purple Octopus Moms Are Super Weird, and They’re Doomed” by January Gill O’Neil, read by Lillie Dudley
April 12, 2021 – “The Dragon” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, read by Hugh Sheehy
April 13, 2021 – “Where the Mind is Without Fear” by Rabindranath Tagore, read by Reeya Banerjee
April 14, 2021 – “Sonnet X” (Death Be Not Proud) by John Donne, read by Camilla W. von Bergen
April 15, 2021 – “Four Ducks on a Pond” by William Allingham, read by Carol Marquand
April 16, 2021 – “Bank Tangle” by Mary Newell, read by the author
April 17, 2021 – “Yeats in the Underworld On a Sunday Morning, Riding the Uptown #2” by Helen Morrissey Rizzuto, read by Margaret Vetare
April 18, 2021 – “Every day as a wide field, every page” by Naomi Shihab Nye, read by Tanya Steel
April 19, 2021 – “A Tale Begun” by Wislawa Szymborska, read by Davis McCallum
April 20, 2021 – “Tea Time” by Alison MacAvery, read by the author
April 21, 2021 – “The Pangolin” by Marianne Moore, read by Ryan Biracree
April 22, 2021 – “Ode to Tomatoes” by Pablo Neruda, read by Nancy Young
April 23, 2021 – “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, read by Suzie Gilbert
April 24, 2021 – “maggie and milly and molly and may” by E. E. Cummings, read by Lucille Merry
April 25, 2021 – “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond” by E. E. Cummings, read by Cristina Martin
April 26, 2021 – “A Happy Birthday” by Ted Kooser, read by Jen McCreery
April 27, 2021 – “Holiday” by Sarah Gambito, read by Yvonne de Salle
April 28, 2021 – “Bears” by Adrienne Rich, read by Jessie Shaffer
April 29, 2021 – “Filling Station” by Elizabeth Bishop, read by Beth Vardy
April 30, 2021 – “Freedom Visits Me…” by Hector Rodriguez, read by Cynthia Kling

2020

April 1, 2020 – Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way by Nancy Willard read by Jen McCreery
April 2, 2020 – O Where Are You Going by WH Auden, read by Matt Clifton
April 3, 2020 – Everything Happens from Bandstand, read by Joann Brown
April 4, 2020 – Duino Elegies 8 by Rainer Maria Rilke, read By Edwin Torres
April 5, 2020 – One Day He’s Gonna Cook Me A Meal by Ann Ziety, read by Sue Bevan
April 6, 2020 – The Meehoo With An Exactlywatt by Shel Silverstein, read by Elias Zaklad
April 7, 2020 – The Trees by Philip Larkin, read by Heidi Bender
April 8 2020 – A Miracle For Breakfast by Elizabeth Bishop, read by Lindy Labriola
April 9 2020 – The Folly Of Being Comforted by WB Yeats, read by Alan Vardy
April 10 2020 – Sonnet XIX From In Time Of War by WH Auden, read by Anita Prentice
April 11, 2020 – Oh Have You Heard by Shel Silverstein, read by Justice McCray
April 12, 2020 – Dear Poet, Notes To A Young Writer by Charles Ghigna, read by Raven Howell
April 13, 2020 – King Of The River by Stanley Kunitz, read by Sean Singer
April 14, 2020 – Somebody’s Mother by Mabel Down Northam Brine, read by Lucille Merry
April 15, 2020 – Listen by Barbara Crooker, read by Kathy Curto
April 16, 2020 – Hello, Hello Henry by Maxine Kumin, read by Margaret Vetare
April 17, 2020 – Emptying Town by Nick Flynn, read by Sarah Crow
April 18, 2020 – The Tyger by William Blake, read by Joseph Carmicino
April 19, 2020 – Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye, read by Jillian Buckley
April 20, 2020 – Today By Billy Collins, read by Nancy Young
April 21, 2020 – Two poems by Henia and Ilona Karmel, read by Ryan Biracree
April 22, 2020 – The Lady With the Alligator Purse, read by Matilda Hoffman
April 23, 2020 – Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare, read by Katie Colbert
April 24, 2020 – Magic by Shel Silverstein, read by Edie Giunta
April 25, 2020 – Good Bones by Maggie Smith, read by Karen Shea
April 26, 2020 – A Blessing by James Wright, read by Nicholas Dedring
April 27, 2020 – The Elephant by Dantika, read by Irene O’Garden
April 28, 2020 – Of Mere Being by Wallace Stevens, read by Ellyn Varela-Burstein
April 29, 2020 – To The Stone-Cutters, by Robinson Jeffers, read by Todd Holmbo
April 30, 2020 – Us Two by AA Milne, read by Katherine Merry
May 1, 2020 – When Asked If I Thought That I’d Finally Got It All Together by Judith Voirst, read by Shasta Crombie