Pádraig Ó Tuama, the host of the popular Poetry Unbound podcast, talks about his two new books, his early fascination with poetry, and his belief in the importance of surprise in both poetry and conflict resolution.
Man behind immensely popular Poetry Unbound podcast discusses two books he’s publishing this year, early objections to Patrick Kavanagh, and the vitalness of surprise“The Child is father of the Man”, Wordsworth told us more than two centuries ago, and in Pádraig Ó Tuama’s case the Romantic, Ó Tuama looked forward to poetry classes in school with such excitement that he had frequently learned pieces off by heart well in advance.
This is by way of explaining that Ó Tuama’s deep connection to poetry started young and continued strong, even as it was joined by his work as both a theologian and in the field of conflict resolution – areas that he sees as logically coexisting. “Conflict, religion and poetry are the three energies that I hold together, and they’re all about language”, he says. “That’s the thing.
“In many ways, actually, he’s being a mini-dictator. But it’s totally understandable, because he loves them, and he wants to be loved back by them.” He expands on the theme: “I worked in conflict resolution for a long time in. And so often what you’re looking for as an intervention into escalating conflict is the possibility of a surprise, something unexpected, and something spontaneous.
He continues to work in this area in a part-time role at New York’s Columbia University, spending several months of each year in the States, but returning home to Belfast and to see his family in Cork. In New York, he lives in Hell’s Kitchen, in the west of Midtown Manhattan, and is delighted that he’s only a stone’s throw from the Hudson river: “Sometimes in the middle of a huge city, I do get overwhelmed. It feels like the noise makes its way in.
And yet Ó Tuama can also point to the clear effects that poetry has – from listeners to his podcast, for example, who write to tell him of the comfort they have taken from poems and their discussion in extreme circumstances. Here, again, as he talks of the woman who returns to the sestinas that she and her husband wrote together before his death, or the instances of people listening to his show as they’re gathered around a sickbed, is a very strong sense of art’s spiritual dimension.
Poetry Culture POETRY PODCAST BOOKS LANGUAGE SURPRISE
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