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.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

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

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Poetry Unbound · Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Kimberly Campanello part 2 of 2 · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

Is that right?

Yeah.

And it's a poetry object as well as like when you recite it, certainly when I've seen you recite this, you have pages that you read from and then you let those pages fall to the ground.

So by the end, you're surrounded with detritus of paper, almost like some tornadoes gone through an office and we're just left there surrounded by these records that mention, you know, the ages of these children, two months, three months, three weeks, a year and a half.

it's very affecting.

Yeah, we'll send a link to that for people if they wish to watch.

Yeah.

So... There's a page of it that you and I have corresponded about and that I wonder if you'd be able to read, and then I'd like to ask you some questions about that.

It's the end 1927 one.

Yeah.

It's one of the 796 pieces from Mother Baby Home.

I was at one of the early recitals of this.

In fact, you and I were both reading at an event in Belfast and I was overwhelmed by hearing this piece because it felt in the repetition of that I that it was a lament.

It was somebody trying to start to cry.

It was somebody looking for their own voice.

And it was an attempt to try to put on the page a voice that had been taken away, even in death and even in record and even in some kind of sacred burial or some kind of ritual that would have given a person a place in the land.

What's it like for you to read these, Kimberly?

You said that you think that all poets want to be priests.

I'd like you to talk a little bit about that and maybe to reflect on the priestly nature of your work in Mother Baby Home as well as your work as you're looking at Dante's Commedia.

And what is it that the priest who is the poet is doing in those different situations?

Showing 841–860 of 1,142 · page 43 of 58