Pádraig Ó Tuama is an Irish poet and conflict resolution specialist whose work has been commended by the likes of The New Yorker and King Charles III.
He recently arrived on Maui for a summer residency at The Merwin Conservancy and is to give readings and talks on Maui and Oʻahu this week.
The Conversation spoke with Ó Tuama about his work, his podcast “Poetry Unbound,” and intentions for the fellowship. He started by reading the opening poem from his latest collection, “Kitchen Hymns.”
Interview highlights
On the art of language
PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA: I mean, we're all in search of language, and language itself, too, is in search of itself, and language points beyond itself also. Language is as a signpost. When you see something beautiful, no proper words will describe it. And if you had 100 wordsmiths looking at the same sunset, you'd come up with 100 different things that were being described, some of which might be what you're seeing, or some of which might be what you're being drawn towards by looking through it, or others of which might be reflecting on yourself and reflecting on the experience of it, or where it takes you in your own memory. I think we can always practice the art of language like a muscle, too.
On his podcast “Poetry Unbound”
Ó TUAMA: The podcast is like, each episode just takes a single poem by somebody else, and I read the poem, reflect on it, and read it again. It's about 10 minutes long. And that's the idea, is that it can be a friend and to say, ‘Oh, listen to this, or this is the form it uses. Or here's something about the background.' I never wanted to feel like you need to know all those things in order to experience it. Because half the time, people come up to me about poems that I wrote, and they don't know the context about what I was writing. They might know that I chose this word because it's kind of a transliteration of an Irish word into English, and they'll tell me what happened in them as they were reading it, and that is the work of art. Art cannot be controlled in terms of what it does.
On The Merwin Conservancy’s "In the Green Room” series
Ó TUAMA: I'm very grateful to The Merwin Conservancy for offering me these three weeks to stay there. I'm going to be 50 this year, so it feels a little bit like a pilgrimage at 50. ... First of all, I want to be there on the land, and I want to hear the sounds of the land, who lives on the land, I want to see what grows. That, to my mind, is a language that I want to take some time in silence to tune into, so that is probably the biggest intention of mine while I'm there. I have a volume of poetry that I'm working on that by the end of August, I need to have a pretty final draft of it completed, so I'll be working hard on that while I'm there. But I don't want to wake up, drink two cups of tea, and start right into that. I want to wake up and be in this ancient, powerful, rich, beautiful land to hear the sounds of it. I'm not thinking that it's speaking to me, I think, however, I'm there and I'll listen.
As part of The Merwin’s Conservancy’s “In the Green Room” series, Ó Tuama will give talks and readings on July 30 at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center and on July 31 at the Honolulu Museum of Art.
This story aired on The Conversation on July 28, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
