Love Between Men

Poetry Unbound’s Pádraig Ó Tuama crafts daring, intimate poems exploring the intersections of theology and eros in poems that ask for the simple right to love.


Some men love each other. For others, love of something else gets between them. Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Love Between Men begins in the garden of Eden, recasting Adam, Eve, and God into voices both abrasive and intimate. Then, in seven deadly sonnets, the poet details his own experiences of exorcisms and gay reparative therapies, exploring desire with its promise and fear of fulfillment. These poems—by turns, intelligent, funny, devastating, and explosive—consider time, the edges of empire, and the limits of the tongue. Here is rage paired with prayer, in punked-up forms and broken sequences. Love Between Men celebrates and challenges love: of history, poetry, language—and, ultimately, of change.