<p>This is the third episode of the Nature, Wilderness and Wildness series of the podcast.</p><p>Ada Limón was born in California in 1976 and was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2022 until 2025. </p><p>She is one of the most notable and noteworthy voices in contemporary American poetry. Some of the themes of her work include love, loss, the body, and the natural world. Limon has published eight collections, including 2018’s <em>The Carrying</em>, which included today’s poem and won the <a href="https://www.bookcritics.org/awards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">American National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry</a>.</p><p>Her latest collection is <a href="https://adalimon.com/startlement" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><em>Startlement</em></a>, published in 2025, and she also published two recent poetry books for younger readers, <a href="https://adalimon.com/in-praise-of-mystery" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><em>In Praise of Mystery</em></a> (Norton Young Readers) and <a href="https://adalimon.com/and-too-the-fox" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><em>And, Too, The Fox</em></a> (Lerner Publishing).</p><p>She lives in Kentucky.</p><p><a href="https://adalimon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">⁠⁠Find out more about Ada Limón&#39;s life and work here.⁠⁠</a></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carrying-Ada-Lim%C3%B3n/dp/147215455X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">⁠You can buy the collection “The Carrying” from Amazon.co.uk here.⁠</a></p><p><strong>Announcing Strong Words</strong></p><p>Shane’s new professional service is Strong Words, which helps businesses, organizations and leaders all around the world find the right words to communicate their mission, their vision, and their impact.</p><p><a href="https://strongwords.ie/">⁠⁠Find out more about Strong Words⁠⁠</a></p><p><strong>Ratings and reviews</strong></p><p>I’d love to hear what you think of this episode. You can leave a comment below.</p><p>If you like the show, we would be so grateful for your rating or review. For one thing, it’s a great way to tell the various platforms that it’s worth showing the podcast to new people.</p><p>If you’re not yet a subscriber on Spotify, please seek out the “Follow” button on the <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/15wJ71x4MHqQZH7YucOlvD">⁠⁠“Poems for the Speed of Life” show page⁠⁠</a> in your Spotify app. You can also leave the show a rating by tapping the stars.</p><p><strong>Music credit</strong></p><p>MANTRon by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/</p><p><br></p><p></p>