Irish poet to speak at Saint Mark’s Episcopal
An Irish poet with a substantial following on both sides of the Atlantic will be coming to Little Rock later this month to speak at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Little Rock.
Pádraig Ó Tuama will discuss his recent book, “Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice and Love,” on April 27 and will sign copies afterwards.
While he’s in town, Ó Tuama, 48, will also participate in a retreat for Episcopal clergy from across Arkansas and elsewhere.
Ó Tuama’s podcast, “Poetry Unbound,” features one poem per episode, followed by a short reflection.
His book “Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World” comes out in paperback next week.
Barkley Thompson, rector at St. Mark’s, described Ó Tuama as a writer, theologian and peacemaker and said his work is particularly relevant today.
Ó Tuama served as leader of the Corrymeela Community, which describes itself as “Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organistion,” from 2014 to 2019.
Prior to that, he worked for the Irish Peace Centres as a faith-andpeace fieldworker.
“Much of [Ó Tuama’s] formation was during The Troubles in Ireland, and who he is as a person in the world was formed by his experience growing up in Ireland at that time,” Thompson said.
Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland claimed more than 3,500 lives between 1968 and 1998, largely ending following the Good Friday Agreement.
“Much of his theology and poetry both are about alienation and reconciliation and identity in a world of conflict, so [it’s] particularly pertinent to the world writ large today,” Thompson said. “His work is as meaningful and pertinent as anybody you’ll find.”
Ó Tuama holds a master’s in theology from Queen’s University Belfast as well as a doctorate in theology through creative practice at the University of Glasgow.
Poetry has power but it doesn’t have many rules.
“Poetry is words in public, usually arranged into some kind of a melodic musical form that might be rhyming, but it might be alliteration, or it might be simply that the sentence is so musical that it lends itself to the ear,” Ó Tuama said.
One poet he considers “extraordinary,” is the late Maya Angelou, a St. Louis native who spent much of her childhood in Stamps.
“As soon as you mention her name, I hear her because she was recorded so often reciting her own
poetry,” he said. “You hear the music of enunciation in her words and it’s often words very particularly and plainly chosen, strung together in unforgettable lines.”
Poetry has been a part of his life for almost as long as he can remember. Growing up near Cork, the third of six children, poem memorization was a big deal.
“It was our school system,” he said. “From the age of 5 to 17, I suppose we were learning about 70 poems by heart a year — half in English, half in Irish.”
These weren’t children’s rhymes, he noted.
“We were learning poems that were written by Irish revolutionaries who were then summarily executed by the British when Irish people were agitating for independence,” he said.
Religion was also key to his upbringing. Ó Tuama’s parents were faithful Roman Catholics and daily Massgoers. He also participated in church activities with evangelical friends, so he was exposed to both traditions.
“We had many American evangelicals in my neighborhood, unfortunately, as missionaries, spreading what they thought the gospel was to places that they didn’t think the gospel was — like Ireland,” he said.
During these formative years, he studied the Bible a great deal.
The exposure has served him well in the years that followed.
“I’m very interested in biblical literature. It’s world literature. It deserves to be honored, as much as Gilgamesh, as much as mythology. It has been world shaping whether one believes it or not, in terms of its religious claims. It has shaped the way people speak and it certainly shaped language as well,” he said.
Ó Tuama considered going to work for an evangelical Christian organization. His sexual orientation was a deal breaker.
He experienced “two years of so-called reparative therapy to try to get rid of the ‘gay devils’ in me,” he said.
Ultimately, he pursued other paths.
“I think my experience of religion is mild in comparison to many,” he said. “I don’t walk around feeling like I’ve been a victim of religion. I feel like there’s been many good things that I’ve gained from it — a love of language and the recognition of the role of ritual in life and access to the most extraordinary literature.”
In December 2022, Ó Tuama told the New Yorker, “My interest in prayer is where it comes from, not where it’s going.”
Asked recently about the comment, Ó Tuama said that prayer “is a word that belongs to the human condition.”
“‘Pray’ comes from [a word] meaning ‘to ask,’” he said. “It’s the heart that asks, the heart that yearns, the heart that hopes, and it interests me to know what is it that we yearn for and hope for and work towards. Anything like that is of some order of prayer, and that’s what interests me.”
If you go: Pádraig Ó Tuama will speak at 7 p.m. April 27 at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1000 N. Mississippi St., Little Rock. Event is free; public is welcome.