Kitchen Hymns
Pádraig Ó Tuama
Kitchen hymns are the songs sung at home, not in the chapel; in vernacular speech, not Latin. The poems in Pádraig Ó Tuama's new collection are a form of hymnody that arise neither from belief nor devotion. A man asks himself if he believes in God and turns to language rather than the maker of language; an agnostic Jesus meets a curious Persephone at hell's exit; a mass for the end of the world is offered by someone more interested in birds than in salvation. In registers of rage, eros and melody, towards nature, elegy and praise, Kitchen Hymns is a study in form and lyric address: the sights and sounds of a poem; the lungs of the world; skin touching skin; experience. Here are poems of originality and feeling - a provocation to thought, and an invocation of the forces that direct the strange, branching paths of our lives.
PUBLISHED ON: 30/01/25
£12.00
ISBN: 9781739440572
Praise for Kitchen Hymns
‘There is an open-hearted, open-handed quality to these poems. An unembarrassed grappling with the big questions; with awe, with doubt, with religiosity in the truest and broadest sense of that word - a consideration of that which binds, of that which restores the part to the whole.’
Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass and I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
‘If I need melody, I’ll turn to Paul Simon. If I need rhythm, I’ll listen to Steve Gadd. But if it's words, well that will be Pádraig Ó Tuama.’
Simon Mayo, radio presenter and author
About the author
Pádraig Ó Tuama (b. 1975) is from Ireland. The host of On Being's Poetry Unbound podcast, and editor of the anthologies of the same name, he splits his time between Belfast and New York City. His writing includes both poetry and prose, and his work been featured on national radio stations in Ireland, Britain, the US, Australia and New Zealand. Profiled by the New Yorker, his poetry has appeared in many magazines, including Poetry Ireland, the Kenyon Review and the Harvard Review. Kitchen Hymns is his fourth collection of poems.