Tag: Penguin India (Vintage)

Categories
Review

Poetics of Belonging

Book Review by Basudhara Roy

Title: Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas

Editors: Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne, Shash Trevett

Publisher: Penguin India (Vintage)

What makes poems in a collection belong to each other? Their shared spirit, one believes, would be the foremost — the way they thematically and stylistically accentuate each other, enter into conversation, deliberate, disturb, demand, and defend. Another significant consideration would be the commitment with which they collectively lay bare a social concern — unpacking it for public attention and discussion, and offering myriad points of entry into its dense complexity. Good poetry, by nature, offers a kind of prescience that is based on empathy, understanding, and the possibility of communication. A good anthology, by its sound aesthetic and social vision, effectively multiplies these virtues by the number of poems it showcases and ensures that the sum is always greater than its parts.

At a time when anthologies of poetry, worldwide, are mushrooming and often questionable in their inarticulate raison d’etre, it is rejuvenating to come across an anthology that exactly knows what it is up to and proceeds to execute its vision with ideological clarity and ineluctable grace. Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas edited by Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne, and Shash Trevett is the most comprehensive and perhaps, one of the most representative anthology of post-independence poetry in English to emerge from Sri Lanka. Bringing together almost a hundred and forty poets and more than four hundred poems written originally in English or translated into English from Tamil and Sinhala, both from within the country and its scattered diaspora, the book articulates the rich and scarred multicultural heritage of Sri Lanka, what it means to claim belonging to this contested land, and the spirit of belonging itself.

The tiny waterdrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka located on the southern tip of India has always been historically significant. Colonized first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch and finally by the British, it became an independent nation-state in 1948, the transfer of power there being peaceful and orderly, unlike the gory turbulence witnessed in the mainland of the Indian subcontinent. Ceylon, as it was known then and until 1972, showed every promise of securing a more stable statehood and better standards of socioeconomic development among the many new decolonized states across Asia and Africa. But the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, its fatal walk toward ethnic democracy and the violent consequences of such deep antagonisms are well-known.

The twenty-six-year civil war in the island between the Sinhalese-dominated government (mostly Buddhist) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (mostly Hindu) has been one of the most intense, brutal, and protracted ethnonational conflicts in global politics, the economic and human costs of which have been enormous. Acts of violence and ethnic cleansing by the LTTE against Muslims, Sri Lanka’s third-largest ethnic community have also occupied a significant place in its history. Added to these pogroms have been the ravages of nature in the tsunami of December 2004 which left the island totally uprooted and its severe economic crisis in recent times.

Waves of migration from the island, both voluntary and forced, have led to the creation of a group of expatriates and refugees who refuse to acknowledge their identity as Sri Lankans. How do a people find themselves under such circumstances? How do they lay claim to belonging and community? How do they resurrect for themselves a sense of tradition out of the debris? Out of Sri Lanka attempts a searching answer to all these questions and more as it brings to us, from all sections of its diverse society, voices that have, over the years, negotiated with all these crises in order to craft a narrative of resilience which, as the editors hope, will enable it to “take control of its destiny”.

The extremely articulate and well-researched introduction to the book is, in many ways, an intellectual treasure as it places poetry from the country and its diaspora within its seasoned and sensitive political and linguistic contexts, and offers an entry through it, into the fluid and dynamic nature of postcolonial poetry as a whole. The editors’ decision to not compartmentalise the poets in the collection on the basis of the languages they choose to write in but to showcase them in alphabetical order has been, by far, one of the most pertinent editorial decisions in keeping with the vision of this anthology. Given the linguistic grounds on which the political history of the island has been repeatedly fractured, the representation of poets as a cohesive group of witness-bearers regardless of their language and the ethno-ideological affiliations that a language is likely to connote, is a major step toward the envisioning of a more equitable and egalitarian society.

Again, as the editors observe, the traditions of Tamil, Sinhala, and English poetry on the island have rarely rubbed shoulders with one another with the result that their growth, development, and stylistic manifestations have remained rather insular. This book is an attempt to break that insularity by bringing poems from various linguistic heritages and frameworks in dialogue with one another and the results, as any conscientious reader will affirm, are spectacular. One confronts, here, a canvas of multiple arcs of intimacy, fear, insecurity, estrangement, acceptance, accusation, longing, loss, but above all, belonging. Resplendent throughout the book is the idea of identity – gender, territorial, ethnic, linguistic, national, transnational and human.

The editors tell us: “The explosiveness of Sri Lankan history, its cavalcade of events seeming to demand a response, produces a situation where deeply felt and meaningfully shaped poems are often not written by ‘poets’ as we understand that role as a profession supported by publishers, festivals and academic institutions. Instead, we find poems written by photographers, government workers, novelists, journalists – people for whom the luxury of considering themselves one of Shelley’s unacknowledged legislators of the world was never available, but who were pressed by extraordinary circumstances toward a lyric recognition of complexities otherwise beyond understanding.”

Here, in other words, is an urgent poetics, a rupturing into poetry by the incision of circumstance. For the editors, this anthology represents “a human rights intervention.” It is an act of commemoration, a historical acknowledgement of its tumultuous past, “a matter of putting things on record”. In ‘My Land [1981]’ by Cheran (translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmstrom) the pre-Civil War Sri Lanka is conjured with heartwarming admiration: “I stand on a hundred thousand shoulders/ and proclaim aloud: This is my land./ Across the seven seas,/ overcoming the rising waves,/ the wind shouts it everywhere:/ My land/ My land.” And yet, as the decades advance, pain bitterly takes over. “Like an unwritten poem/ you itch/ inside my head” goes the poem ‘No. 16’ by Mahagama Sekera (translated from Sinhala by Ranjini Obeyesekere) and the figurative density of the poem, as one would notice, travels from the personal to the political. In ‘Loose Change’, Ru Freeman writes: “…keep it keep/ the change keep the change keep/ all the noise-making metal  Give us the rest/ whatever that is  in this every man an island/ country of deceit  We are far from home”

“…the time is right – the moment is now – for the world to know Sri Lanka better: its beauty and its pain” assert the editors of Out of Sri Lanka and one cannot but agree with them. A monumental work of literary activism, rigorous and laborious archival, and passionate commitment, this is more than a collection of poems. It is an act of rehabilitation, an attempt toward community-building, an unforgiving appraisal of the past, and a clear-eyed gaze into the future. Every nation must, at some time, stop to listen to itself and to speak of itself. One is glad that for Sri Lanka that time is here.

Click on this link to access some of the poems.

Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Author of three collections of poems, her latest work has been featured in EPW, The Pine Cone Review, Live Wire, Lucy Writers Platform, Setu and The Aleph Review among others. 

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Excerpt

Out of Sri Lanka

Title: Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas 

Editors: Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne and Shash Trevett. 

Publisher: Penguin India (Vintage)

AAZHIYAAL
(b. 1968)

Aazhiyaal (the pen name of Mathubashini Ragupathy) was born in Trincomalee in Eastern Sri Lanka. She taught English at the Vavuniya Campus, Jaffna University, before moving to Australia in 1997 where she worked for two decades in the IT sector and commercial management in Canberra. Aazhiyaal has published four collections of poetry in Tamil: Uraththup Pesa (2000), Thuvitham (2006), Karunaavu (2013) and Nedumarangalaai Vazhthal (2020), the last honoured by Canada’s Tamil Literary Garden. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and have been translated into several languages. She in turn has translated Australian Aboriginal poetry into Tamil (Poovulagaik Kattralum Kettalum, 2017). Aazhiyaal writes about women’s place within patriarchy and uses her work to make sense of the war in Sri Lanka: ‘I believe that poetry is the antidote to the present rat-race. It is needed, it is necessary.’


Unheeded Sights

After the rains
the tiled roofs shone 
sparklingly clean.
The sky was not yet minded 
to become a deeper blue.
The tar roads reminded me 
intermittently of rainbows.
From the entire surface of the earth 
a fine smoke arose
like the smoke of frankincense, or akil wood, 
the earth’s scent stroking the nostrils, 
fragrant as a melody.

As the army truck coming towards me 
drives away,
a little girl transfers her candy-floss 
from one hand to the other
raises her right hand up high 
and waves her tiny fingers.

And like the sweet surprise 
of an answering air-letter
all the soldiers standing in the truck 
wave their hands, exactly like her.

The blood that froze in my veins 
for an instant, in amazement, 
flows again rapidly, asking aloud, 
‘War? In this land?
Who told you?’ 

[tr. from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström]


BASHANA ABEYWARDANE
(b. 1972)

Rohitha Bāshana Abeywardane was a member of the founding editorial board and later editor in chief of the Sinhala alternative weekly newspaper Hiru. In 2003, he was one of the activists who organised the Sinhala-Tamil Art Festival. His journalistic commitments brought on threats to his life, and he had to leave Sri Lanka. He continues to publish and coordinates Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, an organisation founded by journalists in exile. Following a stay in the Heinrich Böll House, Langenbroich, Abeywardane took part in the PEN Writers in Exile Program from September 2007 to August 2010. Today, he lives in Germany with his wife.


The Window of the Present

Nightmares, long dead,
peer through the shattered panes 
of the window of the present.

The dead of the south, killed on the streets, 
with bullet-riddled skulls,
walk once again, through an endless night,

and those of the north drowned in deluges of fire 
when rains of steel drench their unforgiving earth, 
gaze through the shards of glass empty eyed;

as slaughtering armies, prowl under starless skies, 
upholding sovereignty
with blood-soaked hands.

PACKIYANATHAN AHILAN
(b. 1970)

Born in Jaffna in the north of Sri Lanka, Packiyanathan Ahilan has lived through the thirty-year civil war. An academic as well as a poet, he has published three collections of poetry and is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Jaffna. As well as writing about the visual arts, poetry, theatre and heritage, he curates art exhibitions and is co-editor of Reading Sri Lankan Society and Culture (Volumes 1 & 2). Ahilan’s poetry is sparse and staccato, like a heartbeat: he is one of the most influential poets writing in Tamil in Sri Lanka today.


Days in the Bunker III

Good Friday.
The day they nailed you 
to the cross.

A scorching wind
blew across the land and the sea.
One or two seagulls
sailed in an immaculate sky.
The wind
howling in the palm trees 
spoke of unfathomable terror.
That was the last day of our village.

We fishermen came ashore, 
only the waves
returned to the sea.
When the sun fell into the ocean, 
we too fell
on our knees 
and wept.

And our lament
turned slowly into night.

In the distance
our village was burning 
like a body being cremated.

Good Friday.
The day they nailed you 
to the cross.

[tr. from Tamil by Sascha Ebeling]


A Poem about Your Village and My Village

1
I do not know.
I do not know if your village
is near the ocean with its wailing waves 
or near a forest.
I do not know your roads 
made from red earth and 
lined with tall jute palms.
I do not know
the birds of your village
that come and sing in springtime.
I do not know
the tiny flowers along the roadsides
that open their eyelids when the rains pour down.
I do not know the stories 
you tell during long nights 
to the sound of drumbeats 
or the ponds in your village
where the moon goes to sleep.

2
Tonight,
when even the wind is full of grief, 
you and I know one thing:
Our villages have become 
small
or perhaps large 
cemeteries.
The sea with its dancing waves 
is covered with blood.
All forests with their
trees reaching up to the sky 
are filled with scattered flesh
and with the voices of lost souls.
During nights of war
dogs howl, left to themselves, 
and all roads and the thousands
of footprints our ancestors left behind 
are grown over with grass.
We know all this, 
you and I.
We now know about 
the flowers that died,
the abandoned lines of poetry,
the moments no one wants to remember.


3
But
do you know
if the burnt grass 
still has roots,
or if the abandoned poems 
can still be rooted in words?
If, like them, you do not know 
whether our ancient flames
are still silently smouldering 
deep down in that ocean 
covered with blood,
know this today:
They say that
after he had lain in hiding 
for a thousand years
one day
the sun rose again.

[tr. from Tamil by Sascha Ebeling]

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Out of Sri Lanka shines light upon a long-neglected national literature by bringing together, for the first time, Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry written in and after Independence.  Featuring over a hundred poets writing in English, or translated from Tamil and Sinhala reshapes our understanding of migrational poetics and the poetics of atrocity. Poets long out of print appear beside exciting new talents; works written in the country converse with poetry from the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. Poems in traditional and in open forms, concrete poems, spoken word poems, and experimental post-lyric hybrids of poetry and prose, appear with an introduction explaining Sri Lanka’s history.

There are poems here about love, art, nature – and others exploring critical events: the Marxist JVP insurrections of the 1970s and 80s, the 2004 tsunami and its aftermath, recent bombings linked with the demonisation of Muslim communities. The civil war between the government and the separatist Tamil Tigers is a haunting and continual presence. A poetry of witness challenges those who would erase, rather than enquire into, the country’s troubled past. This anthology affirms the imperative to remember, whether this relates to folk practices suppressed by colonisers, or more recent events erased from the record by Sinhalese nationalists.

 ABOUT THE EDITORS:

Vidyan Ravinthiran was born in Leeds, to Sri Lankan Tamils. His first book of poems, Grun-tu-molani (Bloodaxe, 2014), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. His second, The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here (Bloodaxe, 2019) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the T.S. Eliot Prize and Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. After posts at Cambridge, Durham and Birmingham, he now teaches at Harvard.

Seni Seneviratne, a writer of English and Sri Lankan heritage published by Peepal Tree Press, with books including Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin (2007), The Heart of It (2012), and Unknown Soldier (2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a National Poetry Day Choice and highly commended in the Forward Poetry Prizes 2020.

She is currently working on an LGBTQ project with Sheffield Museums entitled Queering the Archive and her latest collection, The Go-Away Bird, was released in October 2023. She lives in Derbyshire.

Shash Trevett is a Tamil from Sri Lanka who came to the UK to escape the civil war. She is a poet and a translator of Tamil poetry into English. Her pamphlet From a Borrowed Land was published in 2021 by Smith|Doorstop.

Shash has been on judging panels for the PEN Translates awards and the London Book Fair, and was a Visible Communities Translator in Residence at the National Centre for Writing. Shash is a Ledbury Critic, reviewing for PN Review and the Poetry Book Society and is a Board Member of Modern Poetry in Translation. She lives in York.