{"podcast":{"title":"The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily","slug":"the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130","podcast_index_feed_id":7043130,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/6220773/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily--6220773","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/da0c6a368b84c1071fbd347ea97864da.jpg","author":"Eliana Benavides","episode_count":933,"summary":"Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver. Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón, as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move y…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-20T16:20:32.051676+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130"},"episode":{"title":"1541: Poem to Watch over You by Omotara James","slug":"1541-poem-to-watch-over-you-by-omotara-james","published_at":"2026-06-19T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/1541-poem-to-watch-over-you-by-omotara-james","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/1541-poem-to-watch-over-you-by-omotara-james--72595947","audio_url":"https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72595947/theslowdown_20260619_20260619_128.mp3","summary":"Today’s poem is Poem to Watch over You by Omotara James. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “On Juneteenth, freedom feels like a welcome long denied. It is also a welcome we must keep making possible for each other every day. Not only in law, but in practice. Freedom should be both a declaration and a way of living. Today’s poem imagines that kind of welcome. It speaks to that miracle of arrival, to a life entering the world without needing justification. It reminds us that before the world teaches us otherwise, there is the simple and sacred fact of being received.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate","meta_description":"Today’s poem is Poem to Watch over You by Omotara James. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “O…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":496,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/episodes/1541-poem-to-watch-over-you-by-omotara-james/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/1541-poem-to-watch-over-you-by-omotara-james.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}