This Week in Poetry: A. K. Ramanujan on Waiting, Farewells, Returning, and Daily Drivel

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

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