An Evening with Poets Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson
Join us in-person or online for an evening conversation featuring poets Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson exploring how poetry can amplify ignored American stories and how silence shapes the act of listening, writing, and truth-telling. With deep attention to history, faith, and the ethics of language, their dialogue will invite reflection on what it means to speak with care—and to make space for voices too long disregarded. All are welcome to join this inspiring evening of reflection on what has been said, what remains unsaid, and what still needs to be heard.
get tickets
In-Person Tickets
Livestream Tickets
About the Featured Guests
Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of some twenty poetry books and chapbooks for adults, young adults, and children. Many of her collections have won awards, and her poems have been widely anthologized. Nelson’s honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship (in the South of France!), a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Ruth Lilly Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Wallace Stevens Award. She has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, as Poet-in-Residence of the Poets Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and as the Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut. The mother of two and grandmother of two, she lives quietly, retired from a long career in academia, with her daughter and three cats.
Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centers around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He presents Poetry Unbound from On Being studios and is the author of the collections of poetry and essay under that name. Kitchen Hymns his most recent collection, came out in early 2025 and it explores language, mythology, eros and the underworld in lyric poetry and persona studies: Jesus of Nazareth the Greek Goddess Persephone being two of his major characters.
about ‘a better way’
This event is part of A Better Way: Sacred Values for Civic Life. At Washington National Cathedral, we believe the gospel compels us to live faithfully at the intersection of the sacred and the civic. A Better Way is our commitment to embodying dignity and respect in public life, offering hope, and providing a moral framework in a divided world.