Short Bio:
Pádraig Ó Tuama, photo credit: David Pugh
Pádraig Ó Tuama (b. 1975, Ireland) is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. He is the host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound and has published volumes of poetry, essays, a memoir and theology. He has two books forthcoming in early 2025: Kitchen Hymns, a volume of original poems (CHEERIO and Copper Canyon Press), and the anthology 44 Poems on Being with Each Other; A Poetry Unbound Collection (Canongate and WW Norton). He lives in Belfast and New York City.
Extended bio:
Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centres around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. Working fluently on the page and in public, he is a compelling poet and skilled speaker, teacher and group worker. He presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios. From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community. With undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in theology, multiple professional qualifications in conflict mediation (specialising in groups), he also holds a PhD (Poetry & Theology) from the University of Glasgow.
Pádraig Ó Tuama, photo credit: David Pugh
When BBC journalist William Crawley introduced Pádraig on the stage to deliver a TEDx talk on Story, Crawley said, "He's probably the best public speaker I know." Profiling Ó Tuama in The New Yorker, journalist and poet Eliza Grizwold wrote “Poetry, for him, is the language the heart speaks not when it reaches for some externalized divinity but when it seeks to understand itself.”
If you’re using this photo for promo, please credit Trevor Brady.
If you’re using this photo for promo, pleased credit Trevor Brady.
“A poem to Pádraig is like a child to Mary Poppins. It sits, alert, in wonder that he should know it so well. I would go out at night to hear Pádraig talk of the poems. The next best thing, maybe even better, is Poetry Unbound. . . . There should be a copy of Poetry Unbound in every bar, every cafe, every train station, every bus station, every airport, every workplace, every school, every university, everywhere!
”
“Poetry Unbound is fifty poems and 300 pages of commentary revealing and confessing why a line of verse might make you weep. But more than that, it is a collection of moments and meditations and a turning towards the ways that some memories, of sorrow and joy, might make us hold on a little while longer, long enough in fact.
”
“(‘In the Shelter’ is... ) Compassionate, Resolute, Confronting, Challenging, Wonderful, Comforting.”
“Tender, heartbreaking, and lyric; an excavation into exile and exorcism as it applies to gay men. This is a book of griefs and resurrection. Beautiful.
”
Poetry, for him, is the language the heart speaks not when it reaches for some externalized divinity but when it seeks to understand itself.
— Eliza Grizwold writing in The New Yorker
I wonder, here, whether I might quote the words of a Cork man, the poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama, whom I met when my wife and I visited the Corrymeela Community... His poem, ‘Shaking Hands’ makes reaching out an imperative of leadership.
— King Charles, on a visit to Cork. June 14, 2018
The prince of England quoted you? It’s been so cold here I’ve been wearing my anorak all day.
— My mother
“Magnificent. . . . Pádraig Ó Tuama’s abilities as a curator of poems combined with his remarkable gift for unpacking poems in such illuminating and generous ways, makes this ground-breaking publication one of the most engrossing books I have read in recent years.”
— Stephen Fry
Honesty, empathy, compassion are the hallmarks of this work from a poet who accepts that he too has a responsibility to help make the world a fairer and better place.
— Martin McGuinness
...compassionate, contemporary and formally innovative
— Patience Agbabi on ‘Daily Prayer’
“You’re publishing a book of poetry? That’s nice I suppose. Did you hear the woman down the road died? It was a lovely funeral. Packed out. ”