May’s Monthly Stories and Poems

May’s selection of stories, extracts and poems have been chosen on the theme ‘Wonders of the World’. As we start to spend more time outdoors, with extra daylight and nature blooming, it’s a time of year where we can really appreciate all of the wondrous things that surround us.

It also links to the theme for The Reader Bookshelf for 2024-25, Wonder. There’ll be more to come from the Bookshelf in future Monthly Stories and Poems packs, we’re so excited to delve into the featured texts with you all.

The world around us is a good place to start looking for wonder, yet this month’s stories and extracts invite us to think about where we can find wonder in our inner worlds, too. From the unfamiliar, surreal and magical, to tracing the past, making the most of the present and imagining the future, wonder can be found everywhere – even in the places where we least expect it, in times of confusion and suffering as well as in joy and curiosity. Finding wonder in the world is not something only younger generations experience; indeed, it is needed more than ever as we grow older.

May’s stories and extracts are:

The Reindeer Cave (extract from Surfacing) by Kathleen Jamie

Mama by Lucia Berlin – from A Manual for Cleaning Women

A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury

Arrival (extract from Impossible Creatures) by Katherine Rundell

Mrs. Manstey’s View by Edith Wharton

A special thanks to one of our international Reader Leaders, Paul from Denmark, for recommending Mama by Lucia Berlin.

We look forward to new ways of celebrating the cultural histories of the trees surrounding The Reader’s home at Calderstones Park with a booklet and new Podcast episode about our National Lottery Heritage Funded project to explore these very trees. This month’s poetry selections look to trees and other elements of the natural world, exploring how the outside can have an impact on how we feel internally.

As a taster, here is a reflection from a Shared Reading group on reading one of the poems from May’s choices:

“The poem is very simple, but also emotionally slightly more complicated – the group loved the feel of it, and especially the idea of the freedom and almost wild energy of Spring…”

May’s poems are:

Wealth in Difference by Harriet Fraser

My love is like to ice by Edmund Spenser

One Cedar Tree by Joy Harjo – from She Had Some Horses

from A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry

The Pine Trees in the Courtyard by Po Chü-i (translated by Arthur Waley)

Today by Billy Collins

If you're a Reader Leader head to the Online Community Hub to download this month's selection.