Pádraig Ó Tuama
Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, conflict resolution mediator, and the author of Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love (2024), Poetry Unbound (2022), Feed the Beast (2022), Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community (2017), In the Shelter (2015), Sorry for your Troubles (2013), and Readings from the Books of Exile (2012), which was longlisted for the 2013 Polari First Book Prize. He is also the host of the popular podcast “Poetry Unbound” part of Krista Tibbett’s On Being Network.
About his most recent collection of poems, Feed the Beast, Jericho Brown says, “This book is unashamed about poetry’s relationship to the spirit. I would go as far as saying this book is one way we know poetry is prayer.” His memoir, In the Shelter, interweaves everyday stories with narrative theology, gospel reflections with mindfulness, and Celtic spirituality with poetry for a memoir that relates ideas of shelter and welcome to journeys of life.
Reginald Dwayne Betts observes how Ó Tuama’s project Poetry Unbound, “is fifty poems and 300 pages of commentary revealing and confessing why a line of verse might make you weep. But more than that, it is a collection of moments and meditations and a turning toward the ways that some memories, of sorrow and joy, might make us hold on a little while longer, long enough in fact.” The book expands on the popular podcast of the same name from On Being and offers immersive reflections on fifty powerful poems. Ó Tuama began the podcast in January, 2020, hoping, at the time, that it would garner as many as thirty thousand downloads. Now that number has surpassed ten million, and Poetry Unbound has become one of the most popular poetry programs in recent history.
For Ó Tuama, religion, conflict, power and poetry all circle around language, that original sacrament. Working fluently on the page and in public, Ó Tuama is a compelling poet, teacher, and group worker, and a profoundly engaging public speaker. He has worked with groups to explore story, conflict, their relationship with religion and argument, and violence. Using poetry, group discussion, and lectures, his work is marked both by lyricism and pragmatism, and includes a practice of evoking stories and participation from attendees at his always-popular lectures, retreats, and events.
His poems have been published at Poetry Ireland Review, Academy of American Poets, Post Road, cream city review, Holden Village Voice, Proximity Magazine, On Being, Gutter, America, and Seminary Ridge Review.
