My name is Padre Gautuma and I, like lots of people, have been waiting for the book

Defer Public by Ilya Kaminsky to come out for months. It was eagerly anticipated.

And I was flying home from Minneapolis to Ireland and I was able to buy it in the airport.

And I'd read it three times before I arrived back in Dublin. It was Ash Wednesday and

so I, in loads of other people, had ashes on our forehead and I always associate this

book with reading it on packed planes with people who had ashes on their forehead.

A book that asks people to pay attention to their complicity.

We lived happily during the war by Ilya Kaminsky.

We lived happily during the war and when they bombed other people's houses, we protested.

But not enough. We opposed them but not enough.

I was in my bed. Around my bed America was falling, invisible house by invisible house

by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money, in the street of money,

in the city of money, in the country of money, our great country of money we forgive us,

we lived happily during the war.

So this poem we lived happily during the war, it's the opening poem in a book called

Defer Public by Ilya Kaminsky.

And the book Defer Public is a poetry collection but it's also a story, almost like a piece

of theater. It has a cast of characters at the start.

And reading through the poems, you're learning about these characters and you're wondering

what's going to happen. Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa in the former Soviet Union,

now Ukraine and his family saw to asylum in the States in the 1990s.

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