Poetry Session – Oct 23, 2026

Open poetry sessions without a single theme offer a wonderful variety of poetry for readers to listen to and appreciate.

Sun and moon represent mother-daughter love

In this session one reader’s recent bereavement caused her to select a poem that extols maternal love:

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,

No love like mother-love ever has shone;

No other worship abides and endures,—      

Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:

…

Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,

With your light lashes just sweeping my face,

Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Generally we recite ghazals by Urdu poets, but here several short poems of Faiz were presented. One is title Word:

A word of affection :

Like a joyful glance -

One which carries the caress of soft ,warm lips . 

Brilliant - like a surge of molten gold .

The very spring of excitement in the lovers’ embrace.

Vallathol Narayana Menon oil painting

Devika, though not practiced in the Malayalam recital of poems, took great care to chant the well-known poem of Mahakavi Vallathol whose theme is the primacy of the mother-tongue in attaining the full growth of the mind. He labels other languages as foster mothers (Dhatrimar) – only the mother tongue can speak one’s soul 

Other languages are merely foster mothers;

One’s own mother tongue is the true mother.

Only by partaking of the nurturing milk of a mother’s affection

Can children attain full growth.

Kamala Das – ‘I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one’

In direct opposition to this the modern Malayali poet, Kamala Das, asks to be left alone in her choice of English as the language of her poetry (though her essays and short stories are in Malayalam).

Why not let me speak in

Any language I like? The language I speak,

Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses

All mine, mine alone.

…It voices my joys, my longings, my

Hopes, 

She affirms her identity in her choice of language.

The poet Wendell Berry describes the wondrous peace that nature brings:

I go and lie down where the wood drake


rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.


I come into the peace of wild things


who do not tax their lives with forethought


Pamela chose a difficult poet, Vijay Seshadri, who has been recited before. The poet is describing disparate scenes – being ushered into a nightclub in Manhattan, watching a Guatemalan boy declaiming impressive texts in English on the subway, and 

the angel with the flaming sword

bringing in the sheep and waving away the goats,

It seems there is some confusion in the mind, which is wholly legitimate in a poet. But it has one estimable quality: each reader can decide what the poet is actually saying.

Glistening fish scales ... are sequins on his vest

Elizabeth Bishop is a poet whose language has crystalline clarity. It describes ordinary scenes, smelly scenes, messy scenes, of fishhouses – but with the kind of evocation only a true poet can bring to a fishmonger’s job:

while he waits for a herring boat to come in.

There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.

He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,

from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,

the blade of which is almost worn away.

Another poet who found his voice in applying perspicuous  language to daily events was William Carlos Williams, doctor and poet. Here he describes a Dawn and its colour –

stirring it into warmth,

quickening in it a spreading change,—

bursting wildly against it as

dividing the horizon, a heavy sun

lifts himself—is lifted—

bit by bit above the edge

Jacob's Ladder

Thomo’s selection of a religious poem by Francis Thompson produced some debate as to how true it is to assert that the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is visible on Earth to the attentive human. On the evidence, barring the unspoilt wonders of Nature, wherever humans have intervened there is mostly ugliness, death and destruction – so it was asserted by a contrarian. The apotheosis with which the poem opens –

O world invisible, we view thee,

    O world intangible, we touch thee,

  O world unknowable, we know thee,

    Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

– is something a mystic can declare, but not you and me. Clearly the poet has had a ‘vision’ and wants to share it, using extravagant phrases like ‘many-splendoured thing’ and the image of a ladder (Jacob's ladder) between London’s Charing Cross and Heaven on which angels are traipsing up and down! Being convinced depends on how credulous you are …

Odysseus

Two readers, including our own Talitha in Trivandrum who joined us, chose excerpts from Homer’s Odyssey impelled by the recent film of Christopher Nolan. Joe’s reason for the choice was  that the film costing hundreds of millions to produce, did not contain even a few lines of poetry from the 12,110 lines comprising the entire Odyssey. How egregious is that!

Therefore he chose a passage from Book 23 where by a sema (a secret) Odysseus discloses something known only to him and Penelope so that she recognises him finally after 20 years of absence. Talitha’s passage from Book 1 evoked a lot of discussion about the law of hospitality (xenia), and the PTSD left by the destruction of Troy on Odysseus; not to speak of the nature of heaven. Parallels with the Indian epic of the Mahabharata were enlightening.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, Sep 25, 2026

First edition cover (1980), illustration by Ed Lindlof published by Louisiana State University Press

Several of the readers found this novel indigestible. It is not that they have not met with comedic or eccentric characters in other novels, but an Ignatius Reilly who walks around illustrating so many psychosomatic disorders is a unique novelistic find. Dyslexia, which one of the readers claimed was his major shortcoming, was probably not among his scourges, because it was not with words or numbers that he had problems. The verdict of Gemini, the AI program, is that “Ignatius J. Reilly is not formally diagnosed with a single, real-world medical affliction. Instead, he is a dramatic composite of various physical, psychological, and behavioural traits that rarely – if ever – occur together in a single individual in the manner Toole presents.” 

Ignatius Reilly’s stubborn persistence in his quirky behaviour and his conviction that “I’m not the problem, the world is the problem,” leads to a series of mishaps with other people, many of whom have heir own behavioural problems. The unrelenting march to doom in the novel is supposedly lightened by ‘humour’ but it is not of the kind where you laugh with the character in a jokey situation, but at the pitiable character. Who is this blunderbuss of an idiot who adopts the pose of a philosopher in the mould of the 6th-century philosopher Boethius who had the concept of a Wheel of Fortune? And eats a vendor of hot-dogs out of his entire cart’s supply?

It was all too much. Even the cockatoo undressing an exotic dancer in a saloon in Bourbon Street, New Orleans, did not lend much fun. 

The Cockatoo Act

Out of a sense of duty several readers did plough through the academic essays of Ignatius Reilly and survive his buffoonish behaviour on display in the novel throughout. As one reader put it, the novel has no plot, but offers a series of disjointed incidents in the life of a ridiculous man.

But it all ends well:

Myrna Minkoff driving off with Ignatius Reilly just as the ambulance arrives to take him to the asylum

Reading the Romantic Poets – Aug 3, 2026

 The origins of Romantic Poetry though nominally confined to a small group of poets in England had such a vast influence that its effervescence may be detected in the poetry of nations across Europe. So special is the delight in their poetry that KRG devotes a whole session every year to mining the untold riches of what those poets left behind, though several of them died very young.

The usual suspects were represented – Wordsworth, Keats, Byron – but so were three women poets and a dashing representative from Spain. It was a thrilling experience. The joy comes through in the accounts supplied by several readers, especially in the verse casually appended to a letter of Keats to a friend where the poet recounts his spontaneous reaction to the song of a thrush floating into his study through a window.

The song thrush

The poem by Wordsworth concerned a hero of Haiti whose leadership in mounting a revolt of the slaves against their exploitative slave-owning plantation masters won the independence of the island (western part) from France – but, at the cost of Toussaint L'Ouverture’s imprisonment and death in a French prison. The poem excited discussion about the subsequent impoverishing debt imposed on Haitians by France to compensate the French landowners for their losses.

Lord Byron, Cleaned up Image of a large statue of Lord Byron erected in the courtyard of Byronei Messolonghi. The statue shows him in Greek costume of the time, standing, gazing at the waters

A poem by Byron demonstrated how committed he was to the cause of the independence of Greece from Ottoman rule. HIs poem was written only a few months before his death from a mosquito-borne fever in Messolonghi – the historic town in located about 250 km west of Athens on the edge of a rich ecological lagoon. Byron seems to have had a presentiment of his death as he ponders his thirty-sixth birthday in the poem, filled with a determination to fight on.

It was invigorating to listen to the Spanish verses of Bécquer, the very embodiment of the spirit of Romanticism in the soil of Sevilla. His famous Rima LIII was recited by Thomo, attempting to learn Spanish through the effort of decoding the pathos of the poem. 

Read on and savour the pleasure of reading the Romantic Poets … to whom KRG returns every August.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon — July 24, 2026

 

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time - first edition 2003 by David Fickling Books,UK

Mark Haddon’s Novel concerns a boy named Christopher Boone whose mind functions far outside the typical norm. He is labelled as ‘neurodivergent.’

Neurodivergence is an umbrella term used to describe people whose brains process, learn, or experience the world differently than what is considered typical.

Instead of treating these differences as flaws or illnesses to be "cured," the Neurodivergence concept views them as natural variations in human brain function – much like biodiversity in an ecosystem. This idea accords with the modern trend of accommodating everyone into society and finding a place for them. Here are some definitions from an AI app, Gemini.

Common Types of Neurodivergence

Neurodivergence isn't a medical diagnosis itself, but rather a category that includes several specific conditions and traits:

• Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC): Differences in social communication, processing sensory information, and deep, focused interests.
• ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder): Variations in executive function, impulse control, focus, and energy management.
• Dyslexia, Dyscalculia & Dysgraphia: Specific learning differences that affect reading, processing numbers, or writing.
• Dyspraxia (DCD): Differences in motor coordination, spatial awareness, and planning physical movements.
• Tourette Syndrome: Neurological conditions involving involuntary physical or vocal movements (tics).

Mark Haddon has explained that the novel was sparked by a single, vivid visual image rather than a fully formed plot:

A dog lying dead on a front lawn with a garden fork thrust through it so deeply that the fork entered the earth and remained standing upright.

At the time, Haddon was trying to write a new novel and sat down to write three entirely different opening paragraphs without knowing where any of them would lead. The image of the dead dog with the upright garden fork was one of those three experiments. 

Original Cover of the Novel shows the scene that triggered the novel

As he wrote it, he began imagining who would find this dog and how that person would react to the scene. That train of thought led directly to the creation of the narrator, Christopher Boone, a teenager who sees the world with intense logic, order, and detachment. He is possessed of a different sort of mind than normal people. What began as a striking image for Haddon became the opening line and trigger incident of the entire book.

One of the creatures that provides a stand-in for the human friendship missed by Christopher is a pet rat, named Toby. Here is a picture:

Christopher and his pet rat Toby

Lastly here is a collage of Collage of Five Famous Persons who may have been Autistic by the modern definition. 

Collage of Five Famous Persons who may have been Autistic

Top Left: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830 – 1886), Poet

Top Right: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791), Composer

Center: Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727), Mathematician and Physicist

Bottom Left: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902 – 1984) , Physicist

Bottom Right: Steven Paul Jobs (1955 – 2011), Computer Entrepreneur

Poetry Session — June 26, 2026

Several poets who have never been chosen before at KRG were selected from the Soviet Union, Syria, Spain and England.

Galich performing his poem about Pasternak with guitar accompaniment

https://youtu.be/aYRQIr6pTRQ?si=JAjT0E-EgZ8o2vk6

The Soviet Union was an especially difficult place for poets — recall Osip Mandelstam who said:

    Poetry is respected only in this country – people are killed for it. There's no place where more people are killed for poetry.

Mandelstam didn’t survive Stalin’s wrath for writing veiled unflattering verses referring to the dictator. Galich, born in Moscow but living in Sebastopol in Crimea, was more circumspect. Once he knew he was in the bad books of the official Union of Soviet Writers, being expelled from it in late 1971, he made his way out, emigrated, and lived to see his satirical poems published from exile in Western Europe. However, he came to grief by electrocution under suspicious circumstances, verifying once again the dictum of Mandelstam and the long reach of the NKVD (now called the KGB).

The poet Noor Akram Al-Hariri

Noor Akram Al-Hariri is a Syrian poet and refugee living in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. The Zaatari refugee camp is the world's largest camp for Syrian refugees, located in the Mafraq Governorate of Jordan, just 10 km from the Syrian border. Established in July 2012, it has transformed from a temporary tent settlement into a semi-permanent urban-style community that currently hosts 50,000 residents, a mere 10% of the Syrians that Jordan has provided refuge to. Here is a reel showing her writing and speaking from the camp where she lives:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1395635838333549/

Noor is not known for many poems. Indeed apart from this one poem Pamela chose which deals with her feelings of exile from Syria to Jordan (where many of her exiled compatriots live), we know of no other poem of hers. Is she a serious poet or a poster-girl chosen by UNHCR to highlight the plight of refugees? Though she has written a book = I Am a Refugee – which documents the daily struggles, memories, and hopes of the displaced people she encountered living in the Zaatari camp, this blogger could discover no other poem by her. 

The sprawling Zaatari refugee camp in the desert housing 50,000 people (BBC)

In the BBC news site below you can see a video of the Zaatari refugee camp from the air. Chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet reports from Jordan on the scale of the crisis from a helicopter flying over the camp.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-35492705

The manuscript page in Lorca's hand with the poem La Raiz Amarga – on the reverse was the newly discovered poem Canta el reloj

Lorca was an accidental find by Joe who came across a news item in The Guardian newspaper online on April 18 about the unearthing of a manuscript page containing a known poem on the recto, and a never before seen poem of Lorca on the verso – just 6 lines, which had lain undiscovered for 93 years after it was published! So a fresh translation into English was fashioned and here you can read it for the first time.

Smart Devices is a collection by Carol Rumens of 52 of her Poem of the Week columns from The Guardian

Another poet, Carol Rumens, whose life work has been the presentation and popularisation of hundreds of poets and poems over 20 years in her column titled Poem of the Week in The Guardian, was herself featured as a poet with a sample titled The Émigrée, just one among hundreds of her poems. She published  20 volumes of poetry between 1973 and 2024.  

Besides you will meet in this account of our session celebrated poets like Walt Whitman (Passage to India) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (God’s Grandeur). The WWI war poet and essayist, Edward Thomas, is represented by an appealing poem (The Unknown Bird). Kavita chose a favourite of hers, Ada Limón, the Latina poet laureate of the United States for 3 years until April 2025. And lastly, Robert Macfarlane who combined with the illustrator Jackie Morris to produce an admirable book of nature poetry!

The Lost Words, cover of book by Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman – May 30, 2026

 

Anxious People - first english edition cover

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman is a poignant, darkly comedic, and deeply human novel. On the surface, it’s a story about a failed bank robbery and a bizarre hostage situation. At its core, however, it is an exploration of empathy, mental health, parenting, and the invisible battles every person fights.

The Premise: A Farcical Crime

The story takes place in a small Swedish town the day before New Year’s Eve. A desperate woman, facing eviction and the threat of losing custody of her daughters after her husband cheated on her, decides to rob a bank using what she thinks is a toy gun. She demands exactly 6,500 kroner (her rent money).

Unfortunately, she inadvertently chooses a cashless bank. Panicking, she flees the building and bursts into an open-house apartment viewing across the street, accidentally taking the prospective buyers hostage.

The “Hostages”

The hostages are an eccentric group of deeply anxious individuals, none of whom take the robber particularly seriously:

• Zara: A wealthy, cynical bank director who attends apartment viewings just to look at balconies. She is deeply haunted by guilt after denying a loan to a man who subsequently jumped off a bridge ten years ago.

• Roger and Anna-Lena: A retired couple who flip apartments. Roger prides himself on his negotiation skills, unaware that Anna-Lena secretly hires disruptions to artificially lower prices just to make him feel successful.

• Julia and Ro: A young lesbian couple expecting their first child. Julia is heavily pregnant and stressed, while Ro is deeply anxious that she isn't ready to be a parent.

• Estelle: An elderly woman who seems completely unbothered by the gun and just wants to chat.

• Lennart: A man hired by Anna-Lena who spends a large portion of the hostage situation locked in the bathroom wearing nothing but underwear and a bunny head.

What Happens Inside

Instead of a terrifying ordeal, the hostage situation morphs into an involuntary group therapy session. Trapped together, the strangers begin to lower their defences. They bicker, order pizza, and gradually share their deepest vulnerabilities, fears, and regrets.

They realise they are all flawed, overwhelmed adults just trying to figure out how to survive. Recognising the bank robber’s desperate plight, the group collectively decides to help her rather than fear her. Estelle reveals she actually owns the apartment and gives the robber a key to the empty apartment next door to hide in.

Police officer Jim hails hostages on megaphone

The Investigation & The Twist

Outside, the situation is being handled by a father-and-son police duo, Jim and Jack. Jim is empathetic and laid-back, while Jack is rigid and desperate to prove himself. Jack is haunted by the same bridge tragedy from a decade ago—he tried and failed to save the man who jumped, though a week later he successfully saved a young girl named Nadia (who grew up to become Zara's therapist).

When the hostages are finally released, a gunshot rings out from the apartment. The police storm in, only to find the room empty but splattered with blood.

During the subsequent interrogations, the hostages deliberately play dumb, giving highly frustrating, contradictory, and unhelpful statements to protect the robber. Eventually, Jim confesses to Jack that he discovered the robber when he delivered the pizzas, felt bad for her, and helped her hide. The "gunshot" was a complete accident caused by a vibrating phone knocking the gun off a table.

The Resolution

Realising that no one was hurt and no money was stolen, Jack and Jim decide to drop the case. The characters' lives are beautifully transformed by the experience:

• The bank robber moves into the apartment with Estelle, securing a safe home and keeping custody of her children.

• Julia and Ro buy a neighbouring apartment and welcome their baby boy.

• Roger and Anna-Lena find peace in their marriage and pick up a new hobby.

• Zara finally opens the 10-year-old letter from the man on the bridge. It reads, "It wasn't your fault," allowing her to finally let go of her guilt and open her heart to a relationship with Lennart.

The Takeaway: Backman uses this whimsical narrative to remind us that everyone we meet is dealing with their own private anxieties, and that a little bit of grace, empathy, and human connection can save a life.

(Supplied by Google Gemini)

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare April 27, 2026

 

Twelfth Night First Folio (1623) Facsimile of first page

Music pervades the play

Shakespeare  was a natural born song-writer and brought as much brightness to his songs as his poetry contained. His plays are no less a repository for his poetry than the sonnets and long poems. In Twelfth Night we witness songs in many moods all written for Feste, the fool or jester who undertook to entertain the people and was employed by Olivia for the express purpose. One of the songs, O Mistress mine, is about a lover longing for the lady of his heart; it was the subject of a reading by Devika, and taken up for singing by Talitha.

These songs were motivated, in part, by the player, Robert Armin, who acted the part in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, which was the troupe organised and owned in part by Shakespeare ca.1594, which later became The King’s Men in 1603 after James I ascended to the throne. Armin’s singing talent could have inspired Shakespeare to write these songs, knowing how much entertainment they would yield to the theatre-goers.

Comedy for misplaced identity

The comedy of misplaced identity in Twelfth Night is the driving force of the play, rooted in intentional disguise, the arrival of identical twins, and the resulting romantic chaos. The audience knows the truth, heightening the humour, while characters navigate absurd situations based on false perceptions.

Shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as a man, Cesario, to navigate the strange land of Illyria safely. This immediately sets up a comedic situation where she becomes a ‘male’ servant to Duke Orsino while being a female in reality. Olivia whom Orsino professes to love adoringly falls in love with Viola (disguised as Cesario), leading to the absurdity of a woman wooing another woman disguised as a man, while Viola herself has fallen in love with her master, Orsino. Orsino shares his lover’s thoughts with ‘Cesario,’ creating dramatic irony, as he is pouring his heart out to the person he will eventually love, while totally unaware of her gender.

The arrival of Sebastian, Viola’s identical twin brother, presumed by her as lost in the shipwreck, turns the confusion into chaos. Characters mistake Sebastian for Cesario/Viola. Olivia, believing Sebastian to be the witty and charming ‘Cesario’ (who was actually Viola), proposes to him. Sebastian, shocked but enchanted by Olivia’s beauty, accepts without hesitation, creating a truly misplaced, yet ultimately happy, marriage.

The role of the fool

Feste, the fool (or jester) in Twelfth Night, serves as the play’s emotional and intellectual anchor, using wit to expose the follies and emotional absurdities of noble characters like Olivia and Orsino. He functions as a truth-teller, musical entertainer, and bridge between the play's romantic and comic subplots.

In the role of Wise Fool Feste exposes folly, for example, when he proves Olivia is a fool for excessively mourning her brother: 

The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul in heaven

Fools in Shakespeare’s plays have the latitude of speaking the brutal truth to their master or others, without penalty. In Twelfth Night Feste pursues his vocation criticising noble characters like Orsino for their inconstancy.

Feste was played by Robert Armin in Shakespeare’s company, an actor so musically inclined that Shakespeare expressly wrote moving songs whose lyrics would have been set to a tuneful melody by the actor and sung. Songs such as Come away, death and The wind and the rain, highlight the play's melancholy, and the theme of fleeting time.

The authorship question

The authorship question regarding Shakespeare's plays stems from a perceived mismatch between the relatively modest, provincial life of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon (not a college man, not blessed with learning in Latin and Greek), and the profundity of the characters he presented on stage, not to mention, the stirring language, in both prose and verse, that he could summon to sustain the drama.

This perceived lack of high-level education, and the paucity of personal documentation (letters, manuscripts) from Shakespeare, prompted suggestions that the plays were written by a more aristocratic, educated figure. Edward de Vere has been suggested as a candidate; others think it could have been Sir Francis Bacon, or even Christopher Marlowe, his rival dramatist of those times. 

Shakespeare Candidates – clockwise from top left, Edward de Vere (Earl of Oxford), Sir Francis Bacon, William Stancley (Earl of Derby), Christopher Marlowe

Skeptics argue that a country actor from Stratford without university education could not have possessed the deep knowledge of law, court life, foreign languages, and classical literature evident in the plays. In modern times Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi are among those who have at minimum urged scholars to subscribe to a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. This is an internet petition and document created by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition in 2007, aiming to promote open academic inquiry into whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the true author of the works attributed to him. 

Actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance authors of the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt

Mainstream scholars, or ‘Stratfordians,’ reject these theories, arguing that Shakespeare’s inborn genius, enriched by his experience in the London theatre scene as a shareholder and actor, account for his insights. They hold that the documentary evidence—title pages, contemporary praise, and legal documents—affirms his authorship, and that authorship studies based on biography are fundamentally unreliable. 

The paucity of  primary documents concerning the author

Shakespeare has left few primary documents underpinning his biography. No diaries or personal writings record his thoughts, opinions, or personal recounting of the events of his life.  For the first 28 years of his life, only five or six records mention William by name.  

The Folger Shakespeare Library has an extensive list of records stored digitally pertaining to the author’s life as seen by Stratfordians; they relate to his Family, Legal and Property. See

https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/family-legal-property-records

Here are some statements from a 2015 PhD thesis by Kevin Gilvary submitted to Brunel University in London which examined in depth the historical evidence and commentaries by various persons who attempted to write biographies of William Shakespeare:

“A proper biography of Shakespeare, that is to say a narrative account of his life based on primary sources, is not possible on existing material. 

“This very lack of biographical materials allows the biographer to indulge narrative flair and imaginative insight within an established framework,

“Many academics present their own work as biography rather than as fiction.

“Those who wish to adopt a biographical approach to Shakespeare should beware the biographical fallacy of deducing details about a writer’s life from the works; instead, the investigator should only undertake sceptical examination of topics for which there are primary sources.

The document that has acquired the greatest notoriety is page 3 of his last will and testament that contains the words I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture:

Page 3 of Shakespeare's will with the intercalatory line (pointed by the red arrow) 'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture' (click to enlarge)

Anne Hathaway

by Carol Ann Duffy from The World's Wife

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'

(from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world

of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas

where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words

were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses

on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme

to his, now echo, assonance; his touch

a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed

a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance

and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.

In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,

dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -

I hold him in the casket of my widow's head

as he held me upon that next best bed.

Carol Ann Duffy

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith – Mar 23, 2026

 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith – first edition of the 1943 novel

Published in 1943, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows Francie Nolan, a young girl growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn during the first two decades of the 20th century. The novel traces her childhood, adolescence, and coming of age amid poverty, family struggles, and the resilience of her Irish-American family. Her father, Johnny, is a charming but alcoholic singing waiter; her mother, Katie, works as a janitor to keep the family together. Through Francie’s eyes, the story captures the daily hardships – hunger, sacrifice, and the relentless pursuit of education – as she finds solace in reading and determination to build a better life. The title refers to the Tree of Heaven, a hardy weed that grows in tenement courtyards, symbolising the stubborn will to thrive against all odds.

James Dunn and Peggy Ann Garner in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) film directed by Elia Kazan

Its Place in Young Adult Fiction in the USA

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is often regarded as a forerunner of modern young adult literature. While it was published as a mainstream novel, its focus on a young protagonist’s internal world, her journey toward self‑awareness, and the realistic depiction of poverty and family, earned it a lasting place in the canon of American literature read by adolescents. It bridged the gap between adult fiction and the emerging genre of YA by:

Katie and Neeley chat about the tree that has been cut

– Centering a teenage girl’s perspective with honesty and depth, paving the way for later YA classics.

– Addressing complex themes—alcoholism, class, gender expectations, sexual awakening, and the value of education – without condescension.

– Being widely assigned in schools for generations, it became a staple of adolescent reading in America alongside The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Though the YA category did not formally exist in the 1940s, the novel’s enduring appeal to young readers and its place in school curricula have cemented its status as a foundational work of what would become young adult fiction.

Aunt Sissy with Francie and Neely on the stoop of their tenement

What It Brings Out About Immigrants’ Struggle in America

The novel vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the Nolans, who are second‑generation Irish Americans. Key themes include:

– Poverty and upward mobility: The family’s precarious economic existence – saving pennies, scavenging, and sacrificing – reflects the common immigrant reality of living on the margins while striving for stability.

– Education as the escape route: Francie’s determination to stay in school and her love of reading embody the belief that education is the primary means for immigrant families to rise.

– Cultural identity and shame: The Nolans have internalised some of the prejudices of the time; they distance themselves from more recent immigrants while still facing discrimination. The novel explores the tension between assimilation and preserving dignity.

– Resilience and the “American Dream”: The story neither romanticises nor dismisses the dream of a better life. Instead, it shows the slow, painful, and often compromised progress that many immigrant families experienced, holding onto hope through small victories, like owning a home or seeing a child graduate.

Francie goes to borrow books from the public library

In sum, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn remains a powerful depiction of how immigrants and their children navigated poverty, identity, and aspiration in early‑20th‑century America, and it helped shape the tradition of honest, youth‑centred storytelling in American literature.

Movie Poster for the 1945 film 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' from which many scenes have been illustrated in this blog

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - 75th anniversary edition