This Week in Poetry

Invictus: Unconquered Spirit with Professor NedumaranProfessor Nedumaran introduces an episode of “This Week in Poetry” featuring William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem “Invictus,” describing it as a source of strength in dark times. He shares Henley’s background of severe suffering, including a tuberculosis of the bone diagnosis at 17, the amputation of his left leg below the knee, and writing the poem in hospital while facing the possible loss of his remaining leg. Nedumaran explains that “Invictus” means “unconquered” in Latin and notes its famous closing lines, which Nelson Mandela recited during 27 years of imprisonment on Robben Island. He then recites the full 16-line poem and closes by announcing a future episode on Rudyard Kipling’s “If.”00:00 Welcome to the Show00:17 Henley’s Story and Context01:01 Why Invictus Endures01:26 Invictus Reading02:48 Closing and Next Episode

This Week in Poetry: Srinivas Rayaprol (1925–1998)

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

Exploring the Poetic World of M. Yuvan: A Contemporary Tamil Poet

In this episode of 'This Week in Poetry with Professor Nedumaran,' the focus is on M. 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! 

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

This Week in Poetry Episode 9: Imtiaz Dharker and Life Between BordersIn episode nine of This Week in Poetry, I introduce Imtiaz Dharker—born in Pakistan, raised in Scotland, and living between London and Mumbai—whose mixed heritage and itinerant life shape poetry that explores displacement, conflict, gender politics, and ideas of home, freedom, and faith. I present selections including “They’ll Say, She Must Be from Another Country,” which challenges nationalism and belonging through the speaker’s outsider status and a “country” found in the cracks between borders; “The Right Word,” which questions labels like terrorist, freedom fighter, militant, and martyr before revealing a child at the door and inviting him in; and poems depicting water as “Blessing” amid scarcity, and a schoolgirl surviving violence to claim the right to be ordinary and insist a bullet cannot kill a book. I close by inviting listeners to share, subscribe, and send feedback.00:00 Welcome and Overview00:17 Meet Imtiaz Dharker01:46 Poem Another Country04:35 Poem The Right Word06:39 Poem Blessing07:57 Poem A Century Later09:27 Closing and Subscribe

This week in Poetry - Episode Eight. In the coming weeks, we shall explore the amazing variety of poems in English written by Indian poets from the Pithamahan of Modernism, Nissim Ezekiel to the very young like Sivakami Velliyangiri, with their 'thoughts weaned in silence, but spoken as poems'. This is a whole new generation of poets exploring creativity with utter disregard for labels and canons, reading aloud, or performing their poems and expressing themselves on a dazzling variety of themes; provocative, transparent, and at times damning. 

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.

Welcome back to this week in poetry - episode seven. A poem is communicated before it is understood. Hence, a poem shall be read aloud heard, especially its music, its orchestrated sounds. The listeners shall feel those sounds before attempting analysis, particularly content analysis. Poems were read aloud in public, in durbars, in the presence of kings and people.

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.

Welcome back to This Week in Poetry. Oh, I am absolutely thrilled to be back with my listeners after a break. We shall begin our new season, visiting some of the great minds who made a huge difference to the ways creativity and poetic imagination would take shape in the 20th century.



In this episode, we shall listen to couple of poems from W. B. Yeats, the Anglo, Irish poet, and two poems from the Tamil revolutionary poet of the 20th century, Bharathi Dasan.



Adam's Curse by W.B. Yeats. Professor Harold Bloom calls this poem, a wisdom meditation. Quite rightly so. Meditation on hard work, beauty and love.



A Coat by Yeats. He wrote this poem in 1914. An interesting poem about the need for a poet to be inventive, creating new rhythms, discovering new content while discarding, old coats, though embroidered and attractive. For me as a teacher, I have to keep alive the urge to be creative, inventive and enterprising. Even though as a teacher, I'm burdened with critiques and interpretations by scholars from around the world.



But then as I, walk into the class, in the words of Yeats, walk naked. Don't carry, your burdens of knowledge. No more embroideries.



Puratchi Kavingyar Bharathi Dasan. It was a major voice after Poet Bharathi. Deeply engaged, in the self-respect movement of Periyar EVR, a strong and passionate believer in Tamil nationalism, a casteless tamil society, a pure and de Sanskritised Tamil language and above all a great lover of nature.



One could find the traces of the revolutionary fervor of Shelley's poetry in poems like Sudanthiram, and Ulagappan Paattu.



That's all I have for you this week. Thanks for listening. Please do share this link with friends and families. We'll catch up with you in my next episode, with more voices from the 20th century till then stay safe and keep listening.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit profrn.substack.com

In this episode, we have an impressive playlist of poems. We being with a reading of a poem by Billy Collins, an American poet. We also have Thomas Hood from the romantic period, and we close the episode with a poem by Meera.



Needless to remind you, we are surrounded by words from the past and the present from east and west, north and south, we get giddy with emotions and thoughts, moods and feelings, entertaining, enlightening, inspiring, always engaging us in a conversation. Listening to them is more than communication.



It's an awesome experience. Well, then let's go time to visit the poets.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit profrn.substack.com

Episode 4: Shakespeare, Frost and Kavikko Abdul Rahman

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