Professor Nedumaran introduces an episode of “This Week in Poetry” featuring Srinivas Rayaprol (1925–1998), born in Secunderabad, educated at Benares Hindu University and later Stanford, trained in civil engineering, and influenced by modern poetry discovered in the United States, though critical of some contemporary American poetry; he founded the magazine East and West and was admired by poets including William Carlos Williams. The script notes Rayaprol’s three books: At the Writers Workshop, Bones and Distances (1968), Married, Love and Other Poems (1972), and Unselected Poems (1995). Several poems are read, including “I like the American face,” “Married love,” and reflective pieces on routine life, fleeting greatness, and the struggle to write, before the host closes and invites listeners to share the episode.

00:00 Welcome to the Series

00:21 Rayaprol Life and Influences

01:00 American Poetry Critique

01:43 Books and Poem One

02:03 I Like the American Face

02:59 Married Love

04:06 Living the Days

05:04 When the Fire Fades

06:00 Closing and Farewell

In this episode of 'This Week in Poetry with Professor Nedumaran,' the focus is on Yuvan, an esteemed contemporary poet from Tamil Nadu. Professor Nedumaran introduces Yuvan's work, highlighting his contributions to 21st-century Tamil literature, specifically mentioning his two poetry collections, 'Thira Pahal' and 'Idhuvum Dhaan, Adhuvum Dhaan.' The episode features readings and discussions of selected poems, emphasizing the joy and emotional depth of Yuvan's poetry. Professor Nedumaran encourages Yuvan to continue his poetic endeavors and invites listeners to explore more of his works.

00:00 Ep. 11 - Yuvan

02:24 Poem - Ninaivootal

04:08 Poem - Avalavae Dhaan 

05:37 Outro

Yuvan's books are available through Kaalachuvadu Publications.

Thanks for listening to this episode. Please share this with those who love poetry like we do! 

In this episode of This Week in Poetry, I read and discuss four poems by A. K. Ramanujan from Uncollected Poems and Prose (Oxford India Paperback, 2001), and I recommend Journey’s: A Poet’s Diary (Penguin Random House, 2019). I introduce “Waiting,” describing a speaker watching a family of four pass by while he waits aimlessly, then I read the poem in full. I move to “Farewells,” reflecting on everyday goodbyes—comic delays at a railway station and an unfinished cooperative-society presentation—alongside poignant, distinctly Indian leave-takings in a dying patriarch’s household. I read “Returning,” which ends with the realization that the speaker is 61 and motherless for 40 years. I close with “Daily Drivel, a monologue” (1992), a fast-paced list of chores contrasted with “you” going to see Othello, and I thank listeners and invite them to share the episode.

00:00 Welcome and Reading List

00:54 Waiting Poem Setup

02:18 Waiting Full Reading

03:24 Farewells Essay Connection

04:50 Farewells Full Reading

06:46 Returning Poem Setup

07:23 Returning Full Reading

08:19 Daily Drivel Poem Setup

09:34 Daily Drivel Full Reading

10:55 Closing and Sign Off

In this episode, we shall read some of the poems of K. Satchidanandan, born in 1946 in Kerala, he believes Poetry is performance. Poetry is theater. He writes his poems in Malayalam. And he himself translates them into English. 

A bilingual, literary critic, playwright, social activist, and recipient of many awards, including the Sahitya Academy Award in 2012, Satchidanandan is heard and read with respect by his readers around the world. 

Now to his poems. 

STAMMER

A stammer is no handicap.

It is a mode of speech.



A stammer is the silence that falls

between the word and its meaning,

just as lameness is the

silence that falls between

the word and the deed.



Did the stammer precede language

or succeed it?

Is it only a dialect or a

language itself? These questions

make linguists stammer.



Each time we stammer

we are offering a sacrifice

to the God of Meanings.



When a whole people stammer

stammer becomes their mother tongue:

as it is with us now.



God too must have stammered

when He created Man.

That is why all the words of man

carry different meanings.

That is why everything he utters

from his prayers to his commands

stammers,

like poetry.

GENESIS

My grandmother was insane.

As her madness ripened into death,

My uncle, a miser, kept her in our store-room, 

Covered in straw. 

My grandmother dried up, burst,

Her seeds flew out of the windows. 

The sun came, and the rain, 

One seedling grew up into a tree,

Whose lusts bore me. 

Can I help writing poems 

About monkeys with teeth of gold?

THE MAD

The mad have no caste

or religion. They transcend

gender, live outside

ideologies. We do not deserve

their innocence.



Their language is not of dreams

but of another reality. Their love

is moonlight. It overflows

on the full-moon day.



Looking up they see

gods we have never heard of. They are

shaking their wings when

we fancy they are

shrugging their shoulders. They hold

that even flies have souls

and the green god of grasshoppers

leaps up on thin legs.



At times they see trees bleed, hear

lions roaring from the streets. At times

they watch Heaven gleaming

in a kitten’s eyes, just as

we do. But they alone can hear

ants sing in a chorus.



While patting the air

they are taming a cyclone

over the Mediterranean. With

their heavy tread, they stop

a volcano from erupting.



They have another measure

of time. Our century is

their second. Twenty seconds,

and they reach Christ; six more,

they are with the Buddha.



In a single day, they reach

the big bang at the beginning.



They go on walking restless, for

their earth is boiling still.



The mad are not

mad like us.

GANDHI AND POETRY

One day a lean poem

reached Gandhi’s ashram

to have a glimpse of the man.

Gandhi spinning away

his thread towards Ram

took no notice of the poem

waiting at his door,

ashamed at not being a bhajan.

The poem now cleared his throat

And Gandhi glanced at him sideways

through those glasses that had seen hell.

“Have you ever spun thread?” he asked,

“Ever pulled a scavenger’s cart?

Ever stood in the smoke of

An early morning kitchen?

Have you ever starved?”



The poem said: “I was born in the woods,

in a hunter’s mouth.

A fisherman brought me up

in a cottage.

Yet I knew no work, I only sing.

First I sang in the courts:

then I was plump and handsome

but am on the streets now,

half-starved.”



“That’s better,” Gandhi said

with a sly smile. “But you must give up this habit

of speaking in Sanskrit at times.

Go to the fields. Listen to

The peasants’ speech.”

The poem turned into a grain

and lay waiting in the fields

for the tiller to come

and upturn the virgin soil

moist with new rain.

That's all we have in this edition of This Week in Poetry with Professor Nedumaran. Thank you for listening to some of the great poems of K. Satchidanandan. I hope you have enjoyed his poetry and there is more to come. And I shall meet you again next week with more voices from Indian Poetry in English.

Till then, take care and goodbye for now. This is Professor Nedumaran signing off.

And therefore this week in poetry is an effort at reviving the tradition of Kavi Samelans and Kavi Arangams where poets presented their work to the aficianados and lovers of poetry. Right. Without much ado, let's move on to the poems.

We shall first take up a poem - Ars Poetica, a poem on what poetry is by a modern American poet, Archibald MacLeish.

Then we move on to yet another American poet, William Carlos Williams. Who gives us a deceptively short poem, this is just to say.

Finally we listen to Charles Bukowski, another modern American poet who was called the poet laureate of American low life, with his confessional lyrics about his life in Los Angeles. We present his the laughing heart and roll the dice.

Let's go. And listen.

Thanks for being patient listeners! Do write to me with your feedback and reading suggestions.

Professor Nedumaran welcomes viewers to this week’s poetry episode and introduces readings from “the Masters,” naming William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and Kavikko Abdul Rahman. He highlights Shakespeare’s enduring cultural influence and presents Sonnet 73, explaining it is not a romantic sonnet but a meditation on the “autumn of life” and graceful aging, then reads the poem. He then introduces Frost as a major New England voice (quoting Harold Bloom) and reads “The Road Not Taken,” describing it as a poem about choices, the difficulty of deciding, and how choices shape life’s differences. He briefly praises Abdul Rahman as an important 20th-century new Tamil poetry voice and professor of Tamil, noting his complex imagery and blend of love, life, and spiritual realism, before closing with thanks, a request to share the link, and a sign-off until next week.

00:00 Welcome to the Show

00:36 Shakespeare Spotlight

01:23 Sonnet 73 Reading

02:40 Robert Frost Intro

03:24 The Road Not Taken

04:42 Abdul Rahman Intro

07:07 Closing and Thanks

Professor Nedumaran introduces an episode of “This Week in Poetry” featuring poems from A. K. Ramanujan’s Uncollected Poems and Prose (Oxford India, 2001) and recommends Journey’s A Poet’s Diary (Penguin Random House, 2019). He discusses and reads four poems: “Waiting,” where a speaker watches a family walk by while he waits without knowing for whom or where; “Farewells,” which turns ordinary leave-takings—train delays, a cooperative society presentation, and a dying patriarch’s family gathering—into conversational, humorous, and poignant poetry; “Returning,” in which a 61-year-old searches for his mother and suddenly remembers she has been dead for 40 years; and “Daily Drivel, a monologue,” a fast-paced list of chores that ends with the speaker contrasting his mundanity with a partner’s trip to see Othello.

Nissim Ezekiel waited for his words throughout his academic, poetic,public life. Through his poetry he asserted his identity as Indian, though born of Jewish parents. He was a promoter of poetry. Bruce King, the author of Modern Indian Poetry in English firmly declares, “ Others wrote poems; Ezekiel wrote poetry”.

Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa TS, Night of the Scorpion and Enterprise are up for reading in this episode.Goodbye Party is an interesting satire on our speech patterns and behaviours in certain social contexts.

Night of the Scorpion written in the sixties is Ezekiel's vision of the spoken voice. His mother is poisoned by a scorpion's sting.The poem recalls how the father responded, how the ‘peasants’ behaved in that context and the final ‘motherly comment’. Ezekiel presents reality as” observed, known,felt and experienced”. No room for the intellect to play.

Enterprise - The poem is about a journey. A metaphor for searching for the self. A quest.

Well without much ado. Let's join the Party!

Exploring Indian Poetry in English: Week 1

Professor Nedumaran dives into the world of Indian poetry in English in this podcast episode. He shares his journey with the English language and how he discovered various new words. He credits this curiosity and passion to his teachers and other sources of English learning like All India Radio. The focus of the episode is on Indian poet Kamala Das, her eccentric style of writing, and her two poems 'An Introduction' and 'My Grandmother's House'. Professor Nedumaran discusses the uniqueness of Kamala's Indian-English idiom, her daring challenges to traditional norms, and her self-expression. The episode concludes with a humble invitation to listeners to ignite their love for poetry and to join again the following week for a new episode.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and the Host's Journey

01:20 The Power of Listening and Learning Languages

02:37 Teaching English Poetry and the Impact of Words

03:08 Exploring Indian Poetry in English

04:00 The Beauty of Words and Sounds in Poetry

04:09 Introduction to Kamala Das and Her Poetry

07:17 Reading and Analysis of Kamala Das's Poems

13:40 Conclusion and Invitation for the Next Episode