July’s Monthly Stories and Poems

Through pieces in this month’s stories and poems pack we’re dipping into the huge subject of family and drawing out particular strands to think about, such as ancestry and memory, loneliness and difference, and how much distance can exist between people even within family units. ‘Yeah, it’s true that’, observed one group member in response to one of the poems included in this pack – all the pieces aim for true feeling, even when its uncomfortable. There’s love recorded in the pieces too, sometimes plentiful and shining, even after death, and sometimes hard-won or hardly given.

July’s selections are:

Stories & extracts

‘Otillia and the Skull’, an anonymous folktale from Austria

‘Becoming a Mother’: an extract from If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

‘Nests’ by Kathy Donaghy

‘Homeland’ by Barbara Kingsolver

‘I Stand Here Ironing’ by Tillie Olsen

Poetry

‘A Lost Memory of Delhi’ by Agha Shahid Ali

‘Minority’ by Imtiaz Dharker

‘Family Affairs’ by Elizabeth Jennings

‘Aunt Julia’ by Norman McCaig

‘Sonnets Are Full of Love’ by Christina Rossetti

By Frances Macmillan (Literature Engagement Lead at The Reader)