As she painted the whole scene in detail, I was most struck not by the strategy of sleep, but by the occasional listening to poetry by her and her father, and even more by the fact that there had a poetry podcast that people would choose to listen to more, say, a real crime drama, or music, or even a Saturday night talk show.

I haven’t stopped listening to this poetry podcast since.

So when I read about variant B.1.1.529, or about nine-year-olds who have to wear masks and whose Christmas plays are canceled, I play an episode of Unbound poetry to bounce back. It is presented by the Cork man and Irish poet, currently in New York, Pádraig Ó Tuama.

Forget about apps called Calm, or Breathe, or Mind, or videos where your eyes follow a contracting or expanding black dot or guided meditation where it is suggested that your exhale is longer than your inspiration, Poetry Unbound is a place of bodily comfort. .

It is in the chosen poems and in the unpretentious timbre of Pádraig’s forgiving voice.

At school my husband learned to hate poetry. The ingenious teaching method of his English teacher was fear. One student was starting to read and all of a sudden another boy was called to continue reading. Break and start points were applied arbitrarily and often appeared in the middle of the sentence. There was even a boy named “class corrector”. I imagine this class scene was not unique.

“I think that sometimes people think that poetry is that noble art, to which ordinary and everyday experience tilts in a sense of incompetence and insufficiency, when in reality it is the other way around” , says Pádraig, introducing an episode.

Poetry bows before unexpected human encounters, unexpected moments.

Here is how it goes. He introduces himself, the poem, he then reads the poem in its suave tones, he continues to share his human interpretation – making it accessible to all and relevant to everyday life, then he reads the poem again. The episode could last eight or 15 minutes. There is braided instrumental music throughout. No one ever feels stupid or afraid.

At the same time, last year, we were locked up, the vaccine was in development. Our wiser, more experienced citizens who survived WWII and lost siblings to tuberculosis and emigration before Ryanair told this newspaper how things had improved and how they had seen vaccines “change everything”.

Here we are a year later, most of our adult population is doubly vaccinated, but there is a new variant in town and things seem even more uncertain than 365 days ago.

I have tried everything these 20 months: I walked, I tinkered, I swam in the sea, I meditated and I did yoga, but all combined do not compare to listening to this L cork man read a poem in your ears and listen to him confess his own human struggles, but universal, to fit in, to forgive or to take the trouble to find hope.

My name is Pádraig Ó Tuama, and all my life I have wanted to integrate myself, to integrate myself into a nationality; to the genre; to a religion; to a group of friends. And I never really felt like I did. And poetry didn’t respond to that by saying, “Oh, I fit in with poets.”

“Poetry responded to this by putting me in the company of other people who articulate the language around the idea of ​​not fitting in and thinking that there might be other questions I can ask myself.” rather than “Where am I going to fit in?” “,” Is another of Cork’s human presentations.

In an episode I’ve shared widely with friends, partners, in-laws, and more, there’s a poem about what you learn when you’re alone. He had a universal resonance with people texting a lot from anywhere in Ireland or in their day, when they listened to him.

Brad Aaron Modlin’s “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Year” is the poem, and here are its opening lines:

These words are much better consumed by your ears, via Pádraig’s voice, rather than on this page or screen.

Another poem he treats for us is about what comes with age. It’s called “My Mother’s Body” and it’s by Marie Howe. Here are its first lines:

Again, the voice of this man from Cork is a much more powerful medium for this poem than this page.

In these difficult days, art can offer an escape from reality, watch a movie about the Gucci dynasty, see Lady Gaga change her shape again, watch another Princess Diana biopic, or enjoy Ryan Tubridy donned in a sweater. of Christmas.

But what Pádraig Ó Tuama and Poetry Unbound do is offer us a close confrontation with reality. He talks about loss, nostalgia and belonging, loneliness, times when we did not believe, times when we did not forgive, how to face violence with tenderness and tenderness of conjugal love.

Unbound poetry is a big deal in America, and it’s hosted by one of our own, but I have no idea where it fits in the Irish soundscape. I only know that when everything else fails to calm my exhausted nervous system, eight minutes of reality with Pádraig Ó Tuama never fails to save the day.