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Readings from the Book of Exile by P?raig ? Tuama

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One of the most intriguing and engaging voices in contemporary Christianity is that of the Irish poet, Padraig O Tuama and this is his first, long-awaited poetry collection. Hailing from the Ikon community in Belfast and working closely with its founder, the bestselling writer Pete Rollins, Padraig's poetry interweaves parable, poetry, art, activism and philosophy into an original and striking expression of faith. Padraig's poems are accessible, memorable profound and challenging. They emerge powerfully from a context of struggle and conflict and yet are filled with hope. Full Text - Short

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First published July 1, 2012

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About the author

Pádraig Ó Tuama

27 books429 followers
Pádraig Ó Tuama’s poetry and prose centre around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. His work has won acclaim in circles of poetry, politics, psychotherapy and conflict analysis. His formal qualifications (PhD, MTh and BA) cover creative writing, literary criticism and theology. Alongside this, he pursued vocational training in conflict analysis, specialising in groupwork.

His published work is in the fields of poetry, anthology, essay, memoir, theology and conflict. A new volume of poetry — Kitchen Hymns — is forthcoming from CHEERIO in mid 2024.

Profiled in The New Yorker, Pádraig’s poems have been featured in Poetry Ireland Review, Academy of American Poets, Harvard Review, New England Review, Raidió Teilifís Éireann’s Poem of the Week, and the Kenyon Review.

Pádraig has told stories at The Moth, has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, has presented programmes on poetry and language for BBC Radio 4; and has extended interviews with On Being, with Kim Hill on Radio NZ, and Soul Search on Radio National (Australia). In addition, he has interviewed poets and public figures including former President of Ireland Mary McAleese, Hanif Abdurraqib, The Edge, Sarah Perry, Joy Harjo, Billy Collins and Martin Hayes.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
Profile Image for Jenny (Reading Envy).
3,876 reviews3,696 followers
April 23, 2017
This book of poems I liked even more than Padraig's other volume, Sorry for Your Troubles. They are more personal, focusing on struggling with his own identity within society, within religion, and also confronting issues like suicide of a dear friend, faith, and acceptance of others across the board. Some of these poems can be found in audio or video form on the poet's website, and I'd highly recommend them... sometimes the rhyming nature and repeated phrases can seem overly simplistic on the page but they turn into heartfelt statements spoken aloud. I also love his occasional use of Gaelic, or "Irish."

Some favorites:

"The beginning of wisdom
was when I learnt the difference
between believing the truth
and telling the truth
about
belief."

Northeast morning roads of home
"...listening to the city's starlit skies,
speaking their own silence
to the sad and sinking storm inside your ribs..."

A reading from the book of exile
chapter four

"...we are loving things that
we can never bear
we attempt belief in things that we can not explain
and we rest uneasy in this
sometimesseemingcruelgame...."

Creed
(listen in its entirety with a bit of a track beneath on YouTube)

Ar eagla na heagla (Irish for 'just in case')
"...There is your destination
And your fear of where you're not."
Profile Image for Amy GB.
192 reviews5 followers
June 19, 2019
Everything a book of poetry should be: resonant, thoughtful, beautiful. Deep enough to reveal new gems on rereading while still being clear the first time. This was a gift from a friend and it gave me LIFE, which I assume was her intention in giving it :)
Profile Image for Andrew.
192 reviews10 followers
February 23, 2021
I began this in my bed awake in the middle of the night after sleeping for 2 hours and finished about 36 hours later at my own Corrymeela. Hypodermic.

He’s talked somewhere else about the English word “to pray” coming from the French “prier”, to ask, to request, to call upon. All these poems are types of askings. All seem to have arisen from that heart’s desire, from that Croí [kri] from which we ask for whatever it is we need to keep hold of something. The structure is curious: chapters sequenced in a way I didn’t pay attention to enough as I went (so why am I telling you about it?). One chapter that gut-punched me was “A reading from the book of exile, the unwritable chapter”, which featured this epigraph:

and the place of
pain
is the place of
survival
(and sometimes barely that)

“Postcards to a dead friend” did me in.
Profile Image for Shannon Weidner .
33 reviews
Read
August 29, 2025
Standouts:

- 'Tis the gift
- Howth's soft heather
- Solitary flights
- Mourning prayer
- An offering to God in exile
- What I needed to hear
- Hold yourself together and pull yourself apart
- Who do you say that I am?
1,321 reviews15 followers
January 29, 2017
I’m very glad i read these poems. These poems are very accessible. The author writes simply, plainly and it was a joy to read these. He writes of love and politics and emotions. He writes about loneliness and exile. A good guy. A good book.
Profile Image for Mark Schultz.
230 reviews
August 8, 2021
Readings from the Book of Exile, Padraig O Tuama, 2012. My friend Mike Racette suggested Padraig O Tuama to me, after hearing him several times on Poetry Unbound, a short twice-weekly piece associated with On Being, the suite of offerings started by Krista Tippett which run on NPR and online.

O Tuama’s poetry really made me think. At its root, it is a profound exploration of theology. It is not an academic exploration – it is deeply personal and also deeply connective. That trait – connecting the personal and the universal (or at least, the experience of others), is present throughout this volume, and is for me a mark of great writing. This is true in the “Easy Essay” style poem (Peter Maurin’s form) of “Narrative Theology #1”. It is true also of “My love is a wide wide ocean” which captures yearning, distance, a forlorn hope, yet still hope, for love exists. I was personally struck also by “Marbge is imithe ar mean la an t-samhraidh” which speaks of a young man’s death, and reminded/rehearted me of a friend’s loss of his son:

He is gone,
Marbh 's imithe ar an la seo, liath 's fluich
o mo mhac, ochon, ochon, mo mhaicin bronach
uaigneach insan uaigh fhuar 's uaigneach."
(translation of the Irish:
He is gone,
dead and gone on this grey wet day
oh my son, alas, alas my sad small son,
lonely in a cold and lonely grave).

Today and every other day is now waked
by a grey absence,
bones frozen by clutch of dark earth.
No other way to stay in touch
besides reliving all that is now not living.

O Tuama does not shy away from the tough stuff. He goes right at it, into darkness and pain. As he writes in “the unwritable chapter”
and the place of
pain
is the place of
survival
(and sometimes barely that)

But there is solace, in community, in compassion. Towards the end of the book, O Tuama describes his own travails and the support and love given by friends, ending with an old Irish saying, a great one. (Ar scath a cheile a mhaireas n daoine)
It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.

I started readings from the book of exile thinking it a book of poetry with theological themes. It is that, but even more, I now think, a theological work in poetic form. That in itself shattered some norms and expectations about forms of writing. As O Tuama concludes in his last poem,
Go in pieces
to see
and feel your world.
Profile Image for Marshall A. Lewis.
238 reviews3 followers
September 3, 2020
First I fell in love with his beautiful reading voice. Then I quickly ordered a collection of his poems.
I constantly mix up poems by or things I know about, David Whyte, John O’Donohue & Pádraig Ó Tuama. They all have lovely voices - especially for reading poetry. Having now read a collection of each of their poems, I’d also say that they tend to have similar style and content.
However.
I think I was overall most pleased by Ó Tuama’s poems. I don’t think I found one poem that I disliked wholly. My stratagem for reading books of poetry is to jot down my favourite poems while reading, when when finished, go back and reread the poems I noted. After finishing this collection I only had one poem that truly stood out from the rest for me (Tortuous Atonement) but not because I disliked the rest of the poems; rather, I felt fairly equally pleasantly about them all. So I reread the entire collection.
Upon second read, I found a few poems did indeed resonate with me more than the majority, though still none quite so heavily as Tortuous Atonement.

My favourite poems from this collection were:

Tortuous Atonement
A reading from the book of exile chapter three
A song of ascent
Mo sheasamh ort, lá na choise tinne
An offering to God in exile
What I needed to hear
While he was in Malta
Profile Image for rory.
7 reviews
November 30, 2024
"Do you like the smell of tortured Jesus burning in the snow? Do you like how his veins are pulsing underneath his ripped skin's glow? Do you salivate and lick your lips, swallowing your spit, imagining the sweet meat taste from the barbecuing pit? Do you drink the drink and talk the talk inviting all your friends, To bask in resurrection scents, and eat the flesh of all amends?"

"On a cool November night, we sat on broken chairs on a winter's balcony wrapped in old and holey blankets and smelt the sulky storm, while listening to the city's starlit skies, speaking their own silence to the sad and sinking storm inside your ribs."

I've never felt so connected to someone who lives across the world from me. The tones of religious love and loss, sympathetic to the Christian but equally irreverent, and of queer, quiet moments that should be empty but aren't, are tones that have echoed through my whole life. The inclusion of pieces of the Irish language and speaking through its special phrases is incredibly moving. So so so excellent...
Profile Image for Raoul G.
198 reviews20 followers
May 2, 2020
Pádraig Ó Tuama, in this collection of poems, offers us a glimpse of his ability to write deeply personal and delicate poems. His style is simple but compelling, and contentwise the poems mostly revolve around the topics of faith and fear, love and loneliness, meaning and mourning.

I will remember and return to many of these verses, but the very last poem of this collection will always have a special place in my hear:

The task is ended

The task is ended. 
Go in pieces.
 
Our faith has been rear-ended
certainty amended
and something might be mended 
that we didn’t know was torn. 

And we are fire
Bright, burning fire, 
turning from the higher places 
from which we fell,

emptying ourselves into the 
hell 
in which we’ll find 
our loving, and beloved
brother 
mother
sister
father
friend
 
And so friends, the task is ended. 
Go in pieces 
to see 
and feel your world. 
Profile Image for Mike.
1,550 reviews27 followers
January 29, 2022
chapter four

there are some things too meaningful for talking
and even feeling leaves us full of grief
at all we touch and need and
can never speak of

we are living lives that we can‘t state the name of
we are loving things that
we can never bear
we attempt belief in things that we can not explain
and we rest uneasy in this
sometimesseemingcruelgame

and we rest with tension so
beautiful
its heartaching
Profile Image for Brice Montgomery.
376 reviews35 followers
July 18, 2021
This was a real weird one. I love Pádraig's work with On Being, and his poetry analysis is great in podcast form. Unfortunately, his strengths as a poetry reader were not evident in this collection, as the majority of the poems felt like Rupi Kaur by way of Dr. Seuss. Each poem aspired to hit dramatic emotional beats, but I think they could have accomplished more by trying less.
Profile Image for Billie.
Author 15 books26 followers
September 10, 2020
This is poetry that burns and heals. These are poems which had me wanting to see my friends just so that I could read them to them. It was from Barfield that I learned how poetry speaks in register and with a depth which prose can never quite achieve and O'Tauma—more than most poets I have read—speaks poetry like it is his native tongue and in so doing communicates with the soul bypassing the restrictions of prose language.
Profile Image for Joel Buck.
310 reviews71 followers
November 27, 2020
I never know what to say about poetry. I can't really discuss it on a technical level with any degree of authority, so whatever I have to say tends to be about personal/emotional response.

That feels far too intimate to just be sharing with people.
17 reviews
July 29, 2021
I love the poems of Pádraig Ó Tuama. Moving and funny and touching and splendid in all ways. Hearing him read his poems and others is a very special treat. This is not much of a critical review, I know, but that's how it is with these poems.
Profile Image for Badinomo.
16 reviews
July 18, 2024
A charming collection of poems. I would read the ones I liked aloud to my wife at the dinner table. Almost a “healing” collection. The religious themes were more inviting than I would anticipate and are not marketed on the cover. There are poems in here I will return to.
Profile Image for Robert Irish.
752 reviews17 followers
November 9, 2017
I do not usually read poetry.
I lose patience with its pace.
But this volume of poetry moved me deeply. It's pace made me pause
and see and listen and hear
Profile Image for DV Yost.
9 reviews2 followers
September 20, 2018
After many poems, I had to just stop and breathe.

There is so much deep reality tucked into every intentional detail in this book.
12 reviews
June 10, 2019
Bloody breathtaking, humane and beautiful. It took me a long time to read; going back and forth reading and re-reading some over and over again. In wrung both tears and giggles out of me.
Profile Image for Les Reynolds.
671 reviews3 followers
June 25, 2019
So good. I enjoyed the depth, and grace of the writing.
Profile Image for Brian.
294 reviews
April 5, 2020
Poems that capture beautifully what it means to be human.
11 reviews1 follower
March 19, 2021
I enjoyed this book of poetry immensely. Full of thoughtful reflections upon religion, relationships, and life, this book was a delight.
Profile Image for eik madsen.
348 reviews
November 2, 2025
4,5 stjerner

en meget dybfølt og vellykket digtsamling om en følelsesmæssig hjemløshed, en adskillelse.
Profile Image for Leifer.
296 reviews7 followers
January 20, 2021
I couldn't tell if his poetry was clear and concise or a just a bit thin. Overall, intrigued me enough to read more of his poems.
Profile Image for Mor+g an | DNA.
15 reviews
Read
June 18, 2025
And I said to him
Are there answers to all of this?
And he said
The answer is in a story
and the story is being told.

...

Circle
(for Dani)
It’s funny how things come in
circles.
You, sitting on a step,
smoking a cigarette,
watching leaves fall off a
slowly stripping tree.
Me, hanging photos on a wall,
including one of you
receiving, like a priestess,
your lover’s confession.
Me telling stories of
your conversations.
You, weeping
when your dad asked you
how you were.
Me writing poems about life
while I was slowly plunging into
death.
You breathing in those
same lines,
sitting on a step,
smoking a cigarette.

...

And even though
you do not know your name
you have given nameless places
recognition.
You have baptised spaces merely by
inhabitation,
there has been an inner invitation
that you’ve accepted,
with all that holy, wholly hesitation.

...

God is the story
of whatever works.
God is the twist at the end
and the quirks.

...

Of skinny dipping, lonely nights, charcoal fires, absolution, loads of guilt, break-
fast, bucketfuls of projection, and forgiveness (a longish reflection on the last
chapter of the fourth gospel)

Dove, naked into cold water,
near the cove where the clothed man cooked fish.
The water was teeming with one hundred
and fifty-three screaming out
I do not know the man I do not know the man
I do not know the man whose shackled hands
I’d held the last time I’d seen the sea
walking towards me on Sophia’s heels
stepping over chaos and creating madman’s dreams.
--
‘Come now, fisherman, come on
and maybe sing a different tune
and find a room where you can let me stay
and maybe take that oar out from your own eye
and paddle back to where I started with you.
Let’s be beyond all this
and let’s move on,’ he said to me.

...

When she came to visit she said:
Just because you don’t want to screw us
Doesn’t mean you don’t screw us.
So,
don’t ask me to visit you.
Answer your own queries, queeries.
When she came to visit she said:
Cook for us instead.
That’s what the queen of the lesbians said.

...

he has grown older here.
the body speaks its own
language
and
he has started listening.

...

My love is a wide, wide ocean
and these inland, island roads I’ve taken
will not turn around.

...

Shhhhh
Quietly now,
for she is very near.
And though she doesn’t frighten easily,
you must know
by now
that
you do.

...

Don’t ignore whatever pain is blooming
like a flower that you never planted.
Occupy your hands with kindness.
Remember you can see, even though this blindness
is remarkable.

...

I was sick for nine years.
And, during those nine years, I grew tired of offers of prayer for healing.
Eventually, far too late, I said: Please – I cannot handle your prayers. I am too
tired to cope and too furious to hope for the things that you say so easily.
So, some friends prayed without me.
They sent me to a cabin near the sea,
they gave me wine, and timber for a fire.
they gave me silence, and space and grieving.
Profile Image for Drick.
901 reviews25 followers
November 5, 2021
This is a collection of the Irish poet Padraig O Tuama. His use of images and twists of words are really compelling. One example is Hold Yourself Together and pull yourself apart

"Pay attention to your feelings
keep those feelings sharp
Try to hold yourself together
and pull yourself apart"

How do we make sense of ourselves and the world but examining the various parts of ourselves, while we hold ourselves, another such turn of phrse is in Narrative Theology #3

May the rivers of our aching
know their force and mend their rending.

The very things that overwhelm us, hurt us on the way to healing us. In simple language he makes a clear point. In affirmative action. He writes:

Let your yes be yes and your no be no
Let you yes be seen in your doing
Let your no be not-doing
If you say yes, but do not-do, it is a no.
So forget all your talk.
Tell me by what you do.

Great words in this hyper-political season. I highly recommend this little book to read slowly and reflectively.
Profile Image for Nicole.
Author 1 book6 followers
November 7, 2014
Beautiful, heart-achingly beautiful. I have long been a fan of Padraig O'Tuama's poetry and music. This book did not disappoint.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews

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