44 Poems on Being with Each Other by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Our brains, suggest researchers, are constantly responding to environmental overload and our concentration spans are shrinking. Yet when we don’t have enough time or focus to dive into a full-length book, poems take only a few minutes to read and still allow us to explore and experience other realities and points of view.

In this collection, Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama shares 44 diverse poems with a common theme – what he describes as “fusion and fission … the pull of attachment and the draw of resistance … the energy that occurs between people”.

The collection includes poems about friendship, family, love and loss, conflict, ageing, and related topics. Some poems run across several pages, and others are only a few lines long. The poets are diverse too and from many different countries – including Palestine, Poland, Ireland, India, Greece and the USA, although it’s a pity that Aotearoa New Zealand is not represented. Most of the poems have recent copyright dates and some are translated from other languages.

Ó Tuama introduces each poem with a short reflection or anecdote. After the poem he discusses its content, purpose, and style. He sometimes includes a brief profile of the poet – where and when they live/d, for example, and information about the social, political and cultural context that influences their writing. There’s also a ‘Notes on the Poets’ section at the back of the book, with a paragraph about each featured poet.

Ó Tuama contemplates topics such as who a poem may have been written for, how the poet engages with readers, and their relationship with each other. What do they know about each other, this poet and the listeners? He challenges us to consider our response to each poem, with suggestions for prompting a reaction.

Summarise a poem in four words taken directly from the text, realizing that your choice reveals as much – or more – about yourself than the poem.

He notes that his own responses can change over time, with each new reading bringing fresh insights or interpretations.

Ó Tuama also examines structural elements, including how certain poems are laid out on the page. He considers why words are struck out, for example, and the intent and effect of unusual line breaks. He looks at how asterisks are used in one poem to separate stanzas, likening the asterisks to stars that may represent the Star of David, a sign of belonging, or the shining light of ancestors.

The methods that Ó Tuama uses to explore poems from multiple angles also offer new ways to read poems outside this collection, and to uncover fresh perspectives.

He encourages consideration of how the poet changes the tempo of their poem, how tension is introduced or resolved, how a scene moves from the past to the present. Look closely, he suggests, at what is said and what is not said – which words are repeated, and which words are ‘missing’, how the presence or absence of direct speech and the “back and forth of dialogue” can draw readers into the drama of a poem.

Even extracts from poems in Ó Tuama’s collection are thought-provoking and rich in imagery:

…you know love when you see it,

you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.

From ‘Facts About the Moon’, Dorianne Laux

Look at the box of faces. …

In smudged pencil, on the back of each face, names I don’t recognize. No one left to ask. From ‘Exodus’, Victoria Redel

…I wonder

how often i have mistaken myself

for the seer for the see-er

and others simply as the seen.

From ‘small talk or in my hand galaxies’, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

In the final section of the book, Ó Tuama expresses his gratitude to each poet:

…those makers in their lonesome, sometimes lonely, craft – for the work of their language, the detours, delights and devastations from which they’ve gleaned words for the page.

The strengths of this collection are the range of voices represented and Ó Tuama’s thoughtful and insightful approaches to reading, analysing and responding to the poems. His questions help readers to look at their assumptions and reach their own conclusions about the meaning of each poem. These are poems to mull over and return to again and again over time.

Reviewer: Anne Kerslake Hendricks

Allen & Unwin