If “I’m sorry” slips out of your mouth before you even know you’ve said it — this episode is for you.
Apology Loop is a spoken word piece about the survival habit of over-apologizing: the way we shrink ourselves to stay safe, make others comfortable, and disappear before we cause disappointment.
This poem explores people-pleasing, shame, trauma responses, and the lifelong work of learning to take up space. It’s for anyone who grew up believing that being quiet, small, or “easy” was the only way to be loved.
Listen if you’ve ever apologized for existing, for speaking, for needing, or for simply being human — and if you’re ready to practice saying something different.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Chord Left by Agnes Obel
Written: October 21, 2025
In Don’t Feed the Animals, poet and nurse practitioner Kate Earley delivers a haunting spoken-word piece about empathy, control, and what it means to be “safe enough to love.”
Through the metaphor of the zoo, this performance explores how care can turn to captivity — how survival, hunger, and gentleness are reshaped for the comfort of those watching.
Part elegy, part indictment, Don’t Feed the Animals asks what happens to the wild parts of us when they’re cleaned up for display.
It’s a quiet roar — measured, aching, and unflinchingly human.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: September Song by Agnes Obel
Written: October 15, 2025
Reverse Triage is a taut, atmospheric spoken-word poem by Kate Earley about a quiet office hallway that turns into an unexpected scene of collapse and hesitation.
With stark, cinematic language, Kate captures the suspended moment when everyday routine fractures—the hum of fluorescent lights, the echo of unanswered calls, and the fragile choice to act.
Perfect for fans of contemporary poetry, narrative suspense, and reflections on human instinct, this episode explores the bystander effect and the thin line between ordinary life and crisis.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Mariage d’Amour by Raban
September 24, 2025
In this raw and electrifying spoken word poem, pediatric nurse practitioner and patient advocate Kate Earley delivers a searing indictment of medical gaslighting, institutional betrayal, and the fight to be believed. Body of Proof speaks to every patient who’s ever been dismissed, doubted, or diagnosed with “difficulty” instead of dignity.
Written after years of navigating life-threatening hypoglycemia, systemic negligence, and trauma within Canadian healthcare, this poem isn’t a plea—it’s a reckoning.
With themes of medical PTSD, systemic power, women’s pain, chronic illness advocacy, and trauma-informed care, this episode is for anyone who’s ever had to bring data just to be heard.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Naval by Yann Tiersen
Written: July 5, 2025
In this moving episode of Unspoken, Kate Earley shares “Her Name Means Light,” a poem born from friendship and witness. Centered on Nour, whose name means light, and her brother Wael, the piece captures everyday survival in Gaza—water carried for kilometers, firewood cut from the ruins of bombed homes, and laughter that rises even from thrones of rubble.
This poem weaves together the tenderness of childhood, the weight of hunger, and the unyielding strength of family amid genocide. It asks how hope can persist in a place scarred by violence and whether the fragile glow of one child can resist the dark.
Listeners drawn to Gaza poetry, witness literature, resistance writing, humanitarian storytelling, and spoken word art about survival and resilience will find this episode both devastating and illuminating.
n this episode of Unspoken, Kate Earley reads “The Last Pages of a Genocide,” a haunting testimony that refuses erasure. This poem confronts the politics of silence and complicity—those who turned away, justified brutality, or rewrote history in the aftermath.
Through unflinching imagery and stark witness, Earley names calculated cruelty, collective amnesia, and the weaponization of language itself. This episode weaves poetry with sound to memorialize the unthinkable and to insist on memory as resistance.
If you are drawn to spoken word poetry, resistance literature, genocide testimony, or the role of art in bearing witness, this episode is for you.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Stay Still by Cristian Vivaldi
Written: June 8, 2025
In this gripping spoken word poem, Gaza Is Not a Metaphor, poet and humanitarian Kate Earley strips away the euphemisms and demands we face the brutal reality of mass starvation under siege. This episode of Unspoken confronts the politics of silence, the ethics of witness, and the cost of global inaction — through the voice of a child who dreams of bananas in heaven.
A haunting meditation on genocide, displacement, and the power of language, this piece is not art for art’s sake. It is a call to look, to name, and to never forget.
In this episode, Kate reads Birthright, a searing poetic reckoning with the myth of entitlement and the weaponization of heritage. Through the imagined lens of a North American tourist on a Birthright trip, the poem interrogates what it means to claim indigeneity without ever touching exile, war, or loss. Against the backdrop of occupied Palestine, it contrasts curated narratives with lived devastation, asking: who gets to call a place home, and at what cost?
With layered imagery and unflinching tone, Birthright dismantles inherited narratives—and the silence they depend on.
Content Warning: This episode contains references to displacement, colonial violence, and the current siege in Gaza.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: An Ending, a Beginning by Dustin O’Halloran
Written: June 20, 2025
In this episode of Unspoken, Kate performs “If They Would Just,” a searing spoken word poem that dismantles the hollow excuses and dangerous detachment surrounding the genocide in Gaza.
From hostages to humanitarian aid, forced displacement to selective empathy, this poem interrogates the phrases we hear too often—“If they would just surrender,” “If they would just be thankful,” “If they would just move.”
Each line cuts through apathy to reveal the brutal truths behind silence, complicity, and settler colonialism.
This piece speaks to:
the global normalization of violence,
the privilege of looking away,
and the chilling question:
what did you do when Gaza was burning?
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Happiness Does Not Wait by Ólafur Arnalds
Written: June 4, 2025
In this episode of Unspoken, Kate performs “Apocalypse Fatigue”—a spoken word piece confronting the privilege of disengagement in the face of ongoing genocide in Gaza.
While children burn and mothers scream through rubble, much of the world scrolls past, citing “apocalypse fatigue.” This poem explores the emotional distance of comfort, the dilution of empathy in the digital age, and the chilling normalization of violence through screens and silence.
Themes include: genocide in Gaza, social media apathy, emotional numbness, second-person poetry, and moral responsibility.
If you’ve ever said “I just can’t look,” this episode asks—what does that cost someone else?
#FreePalestine #SpokenWord #Gaza #PoetryPodcast #Unspoken #GenocideWitnessing #DigitalApathy #PalestinianVoices
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Forgotten by Samyula
Written: May 28, 2025
In this episode, Kate shares a haunting spoken word poem titled The Gaza Strip Is the Length of My Morning Walk, reflecting on the dissonance between curated Canadian comfort and the devastation in Gaza.
Walking through Yorkville’s lilacs, luxury bakeries, and quiet parks, the poet draws a devastating parallel between three kilometers of peace and the same stretch of land where children dig through rubble with their hands.
This piece explores themes of privilege, grief, complicity, and the cost of safety in a world where others are starving, silenced, and bombed. It’s a poem about bearing witness, about how air quality warnings and almond butter aisles can feel like betrayal.
In Season 9 of Unspoken, titled “Look Away”, spoken word artist and advocate Kate Earley confronts the world’s silence on the genocide in Gaza through searing poetry, lived witness, and uncompromising truth.
This season explores themes of Palestinian survival, systemic starvation, medical apartheid, and the emotional cost of bearing witness when so many would rather look away. Featuring poems like “Gaza Is Not a Metaphor,” this collection dismantles the language of neutrality, calls out global complicity, and refuses to make art out of atrocity.
Perfect for listeners seeking:
• Palestinian voices and solidarity
• Anti-genocide resistance art
• Poetry rooted in justice, not metaphor
• Raw storytelling on war, aid denial, and emotional truth
There is no metaphor here.
There is only the body,
folding in on itself
while the world debates semantics.
In this episode of Unspoken, Kate performs her original poem “Ungovernable”: a fierce, tender exploration of what healing really feels like for anyone who’s had to make themselves small to survive.
This spoken word piece challenges the myth that healing is always soft, gentle, or palatable. Instead, Kate asks:
What if healing makes you louder, clearer, and harder to control?
Blending personal truth with poetic fire, Ungovernable is a reclamation of voice, boundaries, rage, and sovereignty.
For anyone unlearning politeness as a survival strategy — this one’s for you.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Runaway by Kayne West
Written: July 16, 2025
What does it cost to be wanted? In this raw and lyrical spoken word poem, Kate Earley unpacks the quiet violence of being “palatable”—the pressure to shrink, sweeten, and shape oneself into something desirable at the expense of authenticity. The Art of Being Palatable explores hunger, shame, femininity, and the quiet grief of learning to be lovable by disappearing. A must-listen for survivors, artists, and anyone unraveling the ways we are taught to perform instead of live.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: I love you, I’m sorry (Gracie Abrams) by Minnz Piano
Art: Haenuli
In this raw and furious spoken word poem, Only Palatable When Starving, Kate explores the devastating reality of eating disorder recovery that is only accepted when it stays silent and small. After years of starvation, she finally finds her voice — only to be punished for it by the very clinician who once promised to stay.
This piece rages against the betrayal of recovery spaces that demand compliance instead of true healing, and names the painful truth: that for many survivors, being “too alive” is still seen as a threat.
Through powerful imagery of wild gardens, shattered promises, and survival, Kate reminds us that real recovery is messy, untamable, and sacred.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Solas by Gibran Alcocer
Written: April 25, 2025
In this haunting and lyrical spoken word piece, Anorexia Mirabilis, Kate explores the lasting scars of emotional neglect, trauma, and the deep-rooted shame of needing. Drawing from the history of canonized self-denial, she gives voice to the parts of herself that learned to equate hunger with holiness and silence with safety.
With visceral imagery and raw vulnerability, this poem speaks to survivors, neurodivergent listeners, and anyone who has ever been made to feel like needing was a burden.
Themes: emotional neglect, religious trauma, eating disorders, childhood abuse, neurodivergence, self-worth, shame, survival, spoken word poetry.
If you’ve ever struggled to ask for what you need—or to believe you’re allowed to need at all—this episode is for you.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Je te laisserai des mots by Micha Philipp
In this poignant episode, we present “Requiem for a Body,” a raw and visceral spoken word poem that delves into the arduous journey of reclaiming a body ravaged by years of restriction and starvation. The piece explores the intricate intersections of trauma, eating disorders, and survival, capturing the paradox of recovery—how nourishment, after prolonged deprivation, can evoke sensations of both resurrection and agony.
For those who have used hunger as a language when words failed, and for those who understand the profound weight of being seen yet unseen, this poem resonates deeply. It speaks to the silent struggles and the complex path toward healing.
Key Themes:
• Eating Disorders and Recovery: Exploring the complex journey of healing from eating disorders, acknowledging the physical and emotional challenges involved.
• Trauma and Survival: Examining how traumatic experiences intertwine with eating behaviors and the survival mechanisms individuals develop.
• The Paradox of Nourishment: Understanding the conflicting emotions associated with reintroducing nourishment after prolonged restriction.
This episode offers a space for reflection and connection, inviting listeners to engage with the nuanced experiences of those affected by eating disorders and trauma. Join us as we navigate the delicate balance between suffering and healing, and the journey toward reclaiming one’s body and self.
Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of eating disorders and trauma, which may be triggering for some listeners. Please listen with care.
Note: This episode includes personal narratives and themes that may be sensitive for some audiences.
Copyright © 2025 Kate Earley
Music: Sleep Lotus by Joep Beving
Art: HaeNuLi
In this opening episode of Spoken Season 8, titled Hunger Isn’t Holy, poet and nurse practitioner Kate Earley introduces a new season centered on the lived experience of eating disorders—beyond the stereotypes, beyond the numbers, beyond the aesthetics.
With raw honesty and lyrical precision, Kate explores how disordered eating can become a language—especially for those whose pain was never translated, whose needs were silenced, and whose hunger was treated as something shameful. This season holds space for the complexities of recovery, body memory, trauma, and the quiet courage it takes to want something soft.
These are not polished recovery stories. They are survival stories.
Trigger Warning: This season contains themes related to eating disorders, starvation, religious imagery, childhood trauma, and medical neglect. Please listen with care.
What if your questions were too sharp, too fast, too much?
In this episode of Spoken, poet and nurse practitioner Kate Earley shares The Cost of Asking Why—a raw, lyrical reflection on growing up with undiagnosed autism and ADHD. Through childhood memories, clinical encounters, and moments of quiet rebellion, this poem explores how curiosity becomes criminalized when it comes from a neurodivergent mind.
Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley
Music: Teenage Dreams (Olivia Rodrigo) by Minnz Piano
Written: February 24, 2025
In the Season 7 premiere of Unspoken, Kate Earley introduces a new series of spoken word poems exploring the raw, often invisible experience of living with autism and ADHD—especially as a woman. This season challenges the labels of “too much” and “not enough,” examining how neurodivergent people are often misread, dismissed, or silenced for simply existing as they are.
Through poetry and reflection, this episode opens a space for those who ask too many questions, feel too deeply, or never quite fit. It’s for the kids pulled aside for being disruptive, the adults who mask their truth to survive, and the ones who have spent a lifetime trying to be “normal” just to be tolerated.
If you’ve ever been told to stop asking why—this season is for you.
Topics: Autism, ADHD, masking, neurodivergence, misdiagnosis, fawning, gaslighting, identity
Content note: This episode includes discussions of ableism, trauma, and the experience of being neurodivergent in neurotypical systems. Please listen with care.
