Kitchen Hymns | Poems by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Kitchen hymns are sung at home rather than at mass or the church. From what I understand, in Ireland, where Padraig grew up, kitchen hymns were in the common vernacular and were not allowed at formal mass celebrations in the church. I learned this by watching a video of the book launch with Padraig and his close friend, Marie Howe, a poet. Watching the two of them talk to each other is one of my favorite things.

Most anyone who knows me knows I love Pádraig Ó Tuama. (Whenever I write the name Pádraig Ó Tuama, I have to copy and paste it from somewhere on the web so I get those special marks above the “a” and “o.” By the way, it is pronounced Pad-dreg O-Tuma.) I love his podcast, “Poetry Unbound,” the books that came from that, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other: A Poetry Unbound Collection, and anything else that Padraig does.

Ó Tuama grew up in Ireland in an Irish Catholic family. He often says that their education included lots and lots of poetry. He spoke Irish at home and was greatly influenced by what was going on in Ireland as he grew up (“the troubles”) and the Catholic religion. At one point he even started the path to becoming a priest. As a young man he realized he was gay. Now, he says he has abandoned his religion. Yet almost all his work includes references to Bible passages and characters. I think this poem in Kitchen Hymns does a good job of picturing what I think Padraig is living now.

Do You Believe in God?

I don’t believe in God, I said, and she said, Oh?
Somehow I thought you’d managed to keep that going
even though I haven’t. She asked if I’d told others.

Yes, I said, I have. I mean, it’s not like I’m
saying I Know About What Is. It’s just that the burden
of belief isn’t on me anymore. God, it feels much freer.

I believe I’m in the room next to belief. I hear
the sounds of prayers coming through the walls. I like
the smell of incense. And the sound of fabric rustling fabric

as the people stand or kneel. Sometimes I can tell
the text by the intonation of the reader. I mutter
the responses underneath my breath. Lift up your hearts.

And do you? she asked, Lift up your heart?
Yes, I said, I do, but I don’t know to who.
Whom, she said, Let’s get started on the soup.

I have heard many people express this kind of affection (nostalgia? love?) for the religion they grew up in. I highly recommend this book. The poems are “accessible,” even when you don’t know exactly what they “mean.” It also helps to know that several of the poems are conversations between Jesus and Persephone, an imagined meeting at the gates of hell.

I read a quote I cannot find now that likened poetry to a slot machine—you pull the lever, and emotion comes out. I like that. The poems in Kitchen Hymns evoke emotions and also a lot of thoughts. It’s interesting to wonder what it is like to have grown up in a faith-filled world, then leave it, yet still love it. It fills me with awe to read others’ ideas, things I never would have thought of, such as Persephone and Jesus having a conversation.

In one poem, “The Long Table,” (p. 34), with the epigraph “the dead seemed more alive to me than the living ~Marie Howe,” Padraig writes a full paragraph listing dead people he knew, describing something about them, and saying what he does in response to who they were or what they did. It begins:

Today I get up early because Mags said it’s the best time of the day. She wore yellow trousers and oxblood boots and died when she was twenty. And Georgie told me to be thankful when I’m busy. Relish everything you’re doing, she said to me that Saturday. Dead by Friday. So I make time, in demands, to remember. And when I read a book, I place my hand on it and honor Glenn who worshipped words and friendship. He packed three times love into half a life…

Who would you include at your long table? What do you do to honor and respond to those loved ones you have lost?

I love this book, and I think anyone who reads it, or some of it, will find poems, lines, and phrases that you like and that make you think.