In this episode Jemimah speaks with Irish poet, storyteller and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama. It’s a profoundly wise and insightful interview, touching on themes of language, story, gospel, power, community, sexuality and religion.

After the interview, Nomad hosts Tim Nash and Jemimah McAlpine reflect on Pádraig faith journey and ponder how the lessons he’s learnt might shape their own evolving faith.

Interview starts at 16m 10s

PERMISSIONS

This episode features poetry from Readings from the Book of Exile and Daily Prayer from the Corrymeela Community, which is used with permission by Canterbury Press

BOOKS

Readings from the Book of Exile

Daily Prayer from the Corrymeela Community

QUOTES

“Poetry is the capacity to sacramentalize things you wish you hadn’t experienced, but by approaching them with courage and with tenderness and vulnerability – poetry puts language around something. And so, poetry for me is a practice of courage.”

“We are storied and ‘storifying’ peoples…we have an inherent narrative intelligence, where we use one’s story and use that as a doorway to go into another story to begin to make sense of our lives, and to begin to use caricature and character in order to play around with the possibility of meaning, resistance and safety and shelter. And that’s a glorious thing to do.”