Poetry, Spirit and Survival

10th – 15th March & 18th – 23rd March 2025

Join us for one of two retreats with Pádraig Ó Tuama at the Columba in 2025. 10th-15th March, or 18th-25th March.  
Every culture has generated poetry: poems that narrate survival, pluck, desire, change, shock, delight, wonder and grief. Poetry has been used to call down the gods, and to cast them out. There are famous poems,  and then there are the lines you repeat to yourself when you need them.

These retreats — for writers and readers and lovers of poetry, or those who wish to become any of those — will take a close reading of poems that speak to the human condition: contemporary poems, little-known poems, and well-known ones. We will discuss what the poetry evokes, and have opportunities to practice both reading and writing poetry. Whether you write poetry, or read it — or want to — this opportunity is for you.

Each retreat will follow the same programme, so choose the one that works best for your timing.  

Set at the gorgeous Columba Hotel on the island of Iona, the days will have a mix of walks, discussions, reading, response and down time for rest. The retreat will make usage of some poetry that is part of religious traditions, but there is no expectation that participants have any religious affiliation. Morning and evening liturgies at the nearby Iona Abbey may be of interest to some participants, but are not part of the formal schedule. Closer to the time we will share a schedule, but pack walking boots, and curiosity.

About Padraig

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian and conflict mediator from Ireland. He spent most of 20 years in peacework in Belfast, and now writes, broadcasts and travels. 

His podcast “Poetry Unbound” is part of the On Being project, and since its beginning in early 2020, has been downloaded over 11 million times. His most recent books are “Poetry Unbound; 50 Poems to Open Your World” (Canongate and Norton 2022) and “Feed the Beast” (Broken Sleep Books 2022). He has authored many other books of poetry, theology and prose. 

For Pádraig, poetry opens doors to the human condition: and he treats a poem as a text in conversation with he text of a person’s life. Close reading of the poem brings about close reading of the life of the reader of that poem.