Pádraig O'Tuama

It's fascinating.

And I find that to be the way that you return and revisit so often in your work is a way of, it's a conversation with where it is you hear your poems going and the subject of your poems going to also.

I'd like to talk a little bit about Palestine and Palestinian identity in your work and in your public speaking as well.

You have many sequences in your work and there's a sequence in Tethered to Stars from 2021 called The Holy Embraces the Holy.

And there's just a couple of narrative sequences from that.

I mean an Irish couple, which means three, I should say.

of sequences that I'd like you to read because there's a way within which you describe what it is that perhaps you've been indicating to others through what you've been saying.

It's on pages 8 to 9, parts 11, 12 and 13.

Which sections?

11, 12, and 13.

credit kindness to a place.

I know I'm slightly misquoting that and the choice of Palestine.

I love the introduction of Palestine through the narrative of kindness.

I wonder if you'd say a little bit about that beautiful sentence.

I'd like to lead into talking about your most recent book published this year, shortlisted, as Greg was saying, for the National Book Award in Poetry, with a title that is Ellipses in Square Brackets.

And I'd like to hear you say a little bit about the origin of this book before then choosing a poem to read from it.

And you're going to read a poem.

I mean, you've already read Mimesis from it, but you're going to read another poem from this latest book as well.

I was going to ask you a few more questions about it once you've read it.

Yeah.