Pádraig Ó Tuama

speaker

1,142 appearances 8 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 18 Sep

Pádraig Ó Tuama’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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Poetry Unbound · Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Richard Scott · 24 Jul 2026 podcast

Yeah, yeah.

I had already written down in my notes that this reminded me of archaic torso of Apollo, that, you know, you must change your life.

And this, the impulse of this toward the end is not, you must change your life.

But those three words, recovery is possible.

There is such lush, verdant splendor in the attention to green and playing and healing in this poem.

And in fact, throughout the whole book, in a complicated way, because it's complicated to think about assault and violation and crime together with an assertion of healing, but you hold it together.

And this poem is a shining example.

My God, my language is, I'm picking up on what it is that your poems are doing in me.

And I wonder if you could talk about some of the lines in this poem, Emerald, and, you know, the ones that strike you.

And then I'd love to talk about that final line, recovery is possible.

I've heard from time to time people might speak about the role of art, you know, the role of art towards social healing, the role of art towards personal healing, the role of art towards this or towards that.

And despite the fact that your poems are addressing a speaker's trauma and a speaker's relationship with recovery, I never get the impression that this is art that's commodified into being just one thing.

Is that something that you resist if anybody tries to impose meaning onto your art or onto art in general, to say that here is what it's for?

You referenced, though, in what you're saying, one of the epigraphs that you have at the beginning from Emily Dickinson, I'm grateful that a thing so terrible had been endured.

I told my soul to sing.

And the word that struck me so much in reading that epigraph at the beginning was told, you know, the way within which Emily Dickinson's poem is an instruction to the self.

You know, we kind of don't know how the person feels.

We do know how the speaker of her poem is instructing the self.

And it sounds like you have gratitude towards poetry and the discipline of it too, because clearly, you know, seven years, you said, these things don't come quickly.

This is a book that's populated with references to other people.

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