Praise for Kitchen Hymns

"Host of On Being's beloved Poetry Unbound podcast, Irish poet Ó Tuama continues his search for a faith not borne strictly of religious practice. The title references Irish religious songs heard at home, suggesting the conversational tone of this meditative work. . . . VERDICT Heartfelt, questing poems for anyone reconsidering how to believe"--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

"Darkness brings revelation in this meditative offering from Ó Tuama. . . . These poetic dialogues become hymns and anti-hymns that interrogate the weight of creation. . . . The ghostly liturgy found throughout the collection feels less like a Day of the Dead celebration and more like a quiet reckoning with absence, as the poet baptizes the self into the loneliness of modern existence. It's an admirable and noteworthy performance."--Publishers Weekly

"In reflective, questing poems, Irish theologian Tuama (Poetry Unbound, 2022), a prolific lecturer and editor, unpacks the contradictory coils of life. . . . The poet grapples with doubt and disillusionment and locates answers in language. . . . Tuama is especially adept at depicting the passage of time, whether it's the circuitous rejuvenation of sunrise ('the way that morning is both dead and new') or the colorful autumnal sequence of the seasons, 'the green has gone to brass and berry, copper, ember, fire.' Readers will enjoy this title as a return to or entry point into Tuama's work."--Diego Báez, Booklist

"Kitchen Hymns by Pádraig Ó Tuama catalogs differences between and within belief, knowledge, and memory: 'A different time, a different god, a different violation.' Poems are bursting with questions like 'What's your mother like' and 'When people ask where you have been, what / do you say?' In their elegant answers, the addressee of the book keeps shifting, lines crossed between desire and repulsion, concern and hope."--Cindy Juyoung Ok, Poetry Northwest

"Ó Tuama's voice echoes across the pages and into the room you read from. His storytelling charm is a warm shelter from the overwhelm of uncertainty and doubt. Rhymes are domestic and sweet, traditional yet surprising; characters are at once intensely alive and ghostly, reckoning with each other as much as with their own existence. Explorations and their language are accessible but no less challenging, drawing emotion to the surface you didn't know you had. . . . Both a timely and timeless search for belief, the lyrical Kitchen Hymns encourages us to feel--ourselves, our thoughts, those around us--beyond existential thought."--Turi Sioson, Only Poems

"Pádraig Ó Tuama is a person of many admirable hats, including working on peace and reconciliation organizations, and mediation organizations in Ireland. He's also a public speaker, actively arguing against the abusive "conversion therapy" for queer and gay kids. He is also a podcast host, an event coordinator. He is also a theologian, recently earning his doctorate at the University of Glasgow. His poetry is awash with all of these pursuits and experiences. Kitchen Hymns, just out from Copper Canyon Press, is no exception. . . . [It] probes faith and its invariable stickiness while simultaneously remaining open to its mystical possibilities."--Diana Arternian, Lit Hub

"For Irish poet Padraig O Tuama, seeing the world through poetry is a calling, whether that's his own poetry or someone else's."--All Things Considered on NPR

"A beautiful meditation on the power of faith even in the absence of belief (or is it the other way around?). Arranged in four parts, this book of wonderful poems varies from autobiographical pieces and epistolary prose poems to a series of conversations imagined between gods of ancient mythology and contemporary religion. It must be noted that this is not a tendentious work that requires the reader to share the author's background or beliefs. Many of the poems stand on their own and speak to universal experiences."--Greg Brown, World Literature Today

"Written by the engaging host of the popular show, Poetry Unbound, the poems of Kitchen Hymns are finely honed melodies of survival--shaped with both humor and anger, force and conviction."--Englewood Review of Books, Starred Review

"Ó Tuama is a generous, painterly writer, and his attunement to the fragile, beautiful things of the natural world, and the sharp, painful things of the human, are at the heart of this collection. . . . Kitchen Hymns holds a tremendous amount of pain in its lines, but Ó Tuama seems to thrive in the careful handling of turbulent feelings."--Dave Coates, Poetry Book Society Bulletin

"Ó Tuama trades dogma for the knowing that comes through experience and touch, reckoning with religious trauma, queer desire, rage, and grief. God becomes a 'favorite emptiness, ' 'believe' becomes 'a poor verb.' The body is sacramental in these poems, which are simultaneously vulnerable and erotic, full-throated hymns of joy and sadness alike."--Kate Millar, Public Books

Praise for Pádraig Ó Tuama

"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 Griswold, New Yorker

"Being Here teaches us not just where poetry, prayer, and the history of literature intersect. It shows us how to get to that intersection, how to dwell in a place of ambiguities with the certainty of our souls, and how to use these ambiguities to thrive daily."--Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Tradition

"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 III

"Pádraig's prayers balance precision, spaciousness, heart, humor, doubt, and devotion in a way that feels at once impossible and also desperately needed. I am in love with his unsentimental orientation to the holy."--Nadia Bolz-Weber, author of Accidental Saints

"Ridiculously good. . . . [Poetry Unbound] covers a wide range of topics, forms, and writing styles, making it a fantastic read for poetry-lovers and reluctant-poetry-readers alike. . . . Maybe the best part of the book is Ó Tuama's unparalleled ability to understand, interpret, and write about poetry."--Kateri Kramer, The Rumpus