Pádraig O'Tuama

I wondered was, is poetry on the tongue also like the taste of sadness in the tongue?

Amongst other things too, you know, sweet scent, bitter tongue, she makes it, he drinks.

Does poetry do the same thing?

Is it a recitation of sadness sometimes?

There wasn't a time before tea.

You have two poems with the same title, one from Alight in 2013, Mimesis, and then from your most recent collection, there's a poem of a similar.

I wonder if you'd read both, and then we'll talk about how you're revisiting those.

This is an experiment in the act of mimesis that you're doing.

I wonder if you could tell me and tell us a little bit about the choice to revisit a poem of the same title in a way that they, I'm not sure if you call them companion poems, they certainly feel like they're in conversation, but I wonder if you could give us.

Yeah.

I wanted to...

No, no.

Well, in fact, what's coming to my mind is that there was, around the time of the Irish Peace Agreement, there was a poem that was lauded for its reference to a particular Greek myth and this moment of great transcendent forgiveness.

And it was published in the Irish Times within a week and it became like this particular poem.

And the poet Michael Longley was so uncomfortable with what he thought was going, why is this appealing and why is it popular?

It's popular for the wrong reason that he wrote a companion poem.

to go with it and he will only, from what I know, he only ever reads one with the other.

As a challenge to say, if you think you like this, and it really is a challenge to the audience, and I hear it in you too, a deft demonstration of control of interpretation to say, I am uncomfortable and I'm writing a poem back

to the mechanism of popular interpretation in order to make a poem of that.

Yes.