Pádraig Ó Tuama

Thanks to Ryan, as well as to Susie Kirk, Dimitriou and James Boyer-Smith, everyone at Stanza here in St Andrews in Scotland, all the volunteers, everybody who gives so much time to make this an extraordinary poetry festival.

I've wanted to come to this festival for years, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to come across.

I'm Padraig O'Tooma from On Being, and we're going to be having some conversations today with two extraordinary poets.

Yomi Shoday, who's sitting near me here, and also then Rachel Mann, who'll be joining us via video link.

What we'll do is hear some poems from Rachel and then I'll have a conversation with her.

And then we'll hear some poems from Yomi and have a conversation with him.

And then we'll have a conversation together, all three of us.

So Rachel Mann, we're going to bring her up on the screen.

Let me introduce her.

She is a priest and a writer and a broadcaster, the author of 13 books.

And those books span fiction and literary criticism and theology and commentary and poetry.

She's a visiting teaching fellow at the Manchester Writing School.

And her most recent collection of poetry, titled Eleanor Among the Saints, was published by Carconet in January 2024.

Andrew Macmillan wrote this about the book.

Nobody else could have written this.

Poems formed in the space where divinity, the body, trans identity and history fold together.

So please give Rachel Mann a very warm stanza welcome and we'll hear some poems and then have a conversation with her.

Rachel, it's great to see you.

Rachel, it's powerful to have you reading this selection of poems from Eleanor Among the Saints.

I'm struck by, throughout all of your work, there can often be a desire to give names, and some of that is theological, some of that is playful, some of that is about violence, some of that is about self-declaration.