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

So yeah, I totally vibe with what you're saying, yeah.

So much of what you're doing in these 21 poems reminds me of a conversation that for this same summit I had with Marie Howe a number of years ago, where she too was talking about giving attention to something that's distressing in the life of the speaker and simply asking what else was happening.

you know, what was happening in the next room, what was happening in the bay, what was happening in the garden, to widen the landscape of attention to what's occurring, not to diminish what was occurring for the speaker of a poem, but really also to maybe some of it is distanciation, maybe some of it is artistic curiosity, maybe some of it is just frustration with something having arrested your attention for so long and to an act of defiance in that way.

Would you say that this is something, this is a skill that you've been practicing throughout all of your artistic work to look at something and to look at what's beyond it?

Or is it particular in this sequence of still life that you're interested in that?

And in a sequence of poems that is, you know, explicitly but also obliquely referencing, you know, grooming and profound sexual assault, the speaker of these poems too also has an ownership of the erotic.

Even in the opening line of the opening poem, like a foreskin being pulled back, that there is, it seems to me that there is an assertion of owning that which was stolen.

As we're talking, I'm aware that for some people who might be listening to this who are maybe more familiar with working as a therapist than reading poems or hearing poems being talked about, you and I are using the term the speaker.

And that's a way really of being able to speak about whomever it is that is operating in the poem as the voice.

And even for people who do write autobiographic poems, I think that they're also speaking about a speaker because the poem isn't you.

The poem is its own thing and the poem can do strange things.

Could you talk a little bit about the artistic practice, really, of speaking about the speaker and creating a bit of distance between the poet and the speaker in poems that have nothing to do with the poet's life, in poems that have something to do with the poet's life?

You've talked about how you think about the speaker.

How do you feel about the speaker of the poems?

That's interesting.

That's similar to what I felt.

I felt like this, as I was reading about the speaker, I felt like there was an extraordinary sense of respect toward them, that their tenderness and the tender address of the speaker also was some kind of a protective kind of music.

in the midst of all of this tenderness and the awareness of what it is that might be achieved through the poems, you know, the poems also have a deep sense of resistance and rage, you know.

And, you know, I wanted to be the last little ruined boy, but no one will allow it, the speaker says at one point.

And then this terrible, painful line, it took me so long to ask for help that perhaps it is my fault.

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