Kitchen Hymns
Saying the things you want to say
Dear friends,
Happy New Year! I hope that it found you well, whether that involved parties or a quiet cup of tea followed by an early night.
For New Year’s Day, I was asked by a dear friend (the utterly sublime musician Ross Wilson, the man behind Blue Rose Code) to Zoom into an Edinburgh gig he was playing for Hogmanay. There’s a Scottish tradition that the first person to cross your threshold (the first footing) in the new year brings, among other things, a lump of coal: coal for hearth, hearth for warmth, warmth for love.
So, may this come with warmth for you. And coal. Or whatever heats the heart.
I’ve got a book coming out in a few weeks: Kitchen Hymns. (It’s one of two new books from me; the other is 44 Poems for Being with Each Other.) The phrase has captured me for years — kitchen hymns is an informal term that speaks of the hymns sung in Irish homes that were inadmissible to the chapel because they were in the Irish language, not Latin. Something about that category moved me the first time I read it, and, over years, a project took shape. Then the pandemic, then deaths of friends, then I lost eight years of work in the great data catastrophe, and then I couldn’t even bear to look at a computer screen so I wrote poems with my eyes closed, marking / stanza breaks / with dashes / and unable to read what I needed to write.
I played around with voice for this book — writing some poems in the voice of my favourite Greek god, Persephone; writing some in the voice of an anarchic self-ordained priest named Mother Brendan; writing some in the voice of an agnostic Jesus; and some (okay, all) in my own voice. I think I’m proud of the work. I am certainly curious about what is being sung in kitchen hymns, which might be the same thing. I often find I’m late to the page, and what I think I know is different than what the page knows.
I’ll be having an online launch for Kitchen Hymns on Sunday, January 26, at 5 p.m. ET (or 2 p.m. PT or 10 p.m. GMT). The poet Marie Howe has, very kindly, agreed to be an interlocutor for this video chat. I asked her if she’d do it, and she said, “Great, now I can ask you ALL THE QUESTIONS I WANTED TO ASK YOU ABOUT IT.” Ha! Now I’m curious and nervous all at once.
One of the sequences of poems in the book is called “Do You Believe in God?” — there are 15 poems with the same title in the book. Mostly I am interested in responding to the abstract idea of God with a concrete story. Not to make formal links or establish any kind of theological metaphor; simply to let tangible physicality be in conversation with ideas of meaning.
And the question for you this week is the same: Do You Believe in God? Tangible answers only, please! Nothing to convince or convert — just a story from your life in some kind of form.
See you in the comments, friends. Here’s a poem first.
Do You Believe in God? At twenty-three I walked in the dark to Bull Island’s stretch of beach. I stood beneath the statue of the Virgin Mary. Star of the Sea. I took off all my clothes and shouted I am lonely at the water. It was the middle of the night. There was the smell of oil and rotting seaweed, the glow of factories, smoke catching all the light from Dublin city. —Pádraig Ó Tuama
Poetry in the World
A list of events: In England (Birmingham, London, Oxford), Ireland (Belfast), Scotland (Glasgow, the island of Iona, St. Andrews), and the US (Denver, Nashville, New York City, Pittsburgh)
January 10–11, New York City, New York, US
I am giving a two-day seminar at Union Theological Seminary titled “You you you” that looks at prayer and poetry. Please note that this is in person only, not hybrid. You can find out more details and register here.
January 26, ONLINE 5pm (Eastern) / 2pm (Pacific) / 10pm (Ireland, UK)
Online launch of Kitchen Hymns, in conversation with Marie Howe. Register here
February 4, Glasgow, Scotland
I’ll be doing a reading and discussion at the Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street. Tickets and info here.
February 6, London, England
I’ll be doing a reading and discussion at Southwark Cathedral. Tickets and more here.
February 10, Belfast, Ireland
I’ll be in conversation with poet Gail McConnell at the Crescent Arts Centre. Tickets are free, but you must register to attend.
February 13, London, England
I’ll be appearing as part of Out-Spoken, the Southbank Centre’s poetry and live music series. Tickets and info here.
February 14, Oxford, England
I’ll be in conversation with Matthew Bevis and reading from 44 Poems on Being with Each Other at the Blackwells on Broad Street. Tickets and info here.
February 15, Birmingham, England
I’ll be appearing at the Verve Poetry Festival with Mimi Khalvati. Tickets and info here.
February 20, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
I’ll be doing a reading and discussion of Kitchen Hymns at an event at the Carnegie Lecture Hall, along with poet Philip Metres. Tickets are free, but you must register to attend.
February 23, Denver, Colorado, US
I’ll be in conversation with poet Suzi Q. Smith at the The Studio Loft at Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Tickets are free, but you must register here.
February 28, Nashville, Tennessee, US
I’ll be in conversation with poet Major Jackson at Parnassus Books. Tickets are free, but you must register to attend.
March 10–15 and March 18–23 2025, Isle of Iona, Scotland
I’m holding two Poetry Unbound retreats on the gorgeous Scottish island of Iona; each retreat is the same. Both retreats are booked up, but you can get on the waiting list by contacting the folks at the St. Columba here.
March 16, St. Andrews, Scotland
I’ll be taking part in the annual StAnza Poetry Festival. Tickets and info here.
My brother Jimmy passed away, age 10, after months of illness.
I was nearly 7, a quiet, shy girl who attended a Catholic school. The morning he died I was awakened by a neighbor.
It was early, dark and cold, the heart of winter, the ground covered in a deep snow.
I found my mother, sitting on the steps, quiet, weary, yet composed.
I sat next to her. From there, through the kitchen, I could see my brother in a hospital bed in the dining room.
I looked at my mother and asked "why is Jimmy there? I thought he went to heaven."
She replied, gently, with emotional strength in the moment, "his spirit only goes to heaven".
Oh! I pondered.
We were very quiet, I felt safe, at peace.
My father just then entered a room and cried.
God was there, in our quiet, my father's tears.
One of my favorite modern mystics, Jim Finley, says God is the presence that protects us from nothing yet inexplicably sustains us in our darkest hours. Another, Howard Thurman, taught me to find comfort in the solitary embrace of the pine trees and salt air surrounding my home in coastal Maine.
So yes, with absolute certainty and absolute uncertainty, I find solace and wonder all around. I believe in poetry, which is to say, I believe in God.