In their introduction to this anthology, the editors Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne and Shash Trevett say, “the time is right — the moment is now — for the world to know Sri Lanka better”, and that just about captures the gap this book fills.
Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas (Penguin India) features over a hundred poets, and is an act of archiving, of documenting voices and people, histories and myths of a country rich with it. The course of history has found Sri Lanka grappling with uprisings, civil wars, tsunamis, and now, an ongoing economic crisis. Literature, including poetry, plays witness to human history — adds to it, and finds ways to explain and understand it.
In this book, there are poems “long out of print” and poems that have been beloved for years, sharing space with new, unpublished voices; there are poems in English, and in translation from Sinhala and Tamil. The volume begins with a rich, detailed introduction to all three, offering short historical overviews along with emphasising that in each language, its poets and poetry have played a unique role. “These poetries developed parallel to each other, their lines rarely touching — astonishing, in an island smaller in size than Scotland.”
A new way of life
And as each of these poetries grew independently, they shaping the identities of the people, and reflected their experiences. The act of containing within a single volume, then, all three, also becomes part of the modern-day experience, where, as the introduction states, Sri Lankans today are searching for a way of life that transcends the lines drawn for them so long ago.
The poems tell a developing story of a nation that has seen so much violence and disruption — there are moments of horror, like in the second poem titled ‘Manamperi’ by Aazhiyaal, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström, which speaks of the “language of violence” and is accompanied by a little note on the violent context it was borne out of — the rapes and murders of 22-year-old Manamperi and 33-year-old Koneswari.
And there are scenes captured in black and white — picture postcards from everyday lives, made up of words — like in Sundra Lawrences’s poem titled ‘Rassam’: We sit balancing broths on our laps, blow brown islands in each spoon. In some, lived history finds a voice, like in Eric Illayapparachchi’s ‘Against Colombo’, translated from Sinhalese by Gaya Nagahawatta: engaged in a hundred-year hunger strike/ at the base of the Olcott statue,/ labourers’ eyes register/ the fate of strike action gone wrong.
This is a rich, evocative collection — defiant and proud, with a confident voice that demands to be noticed, demands first our attention, and then awe. Hundreds of voices are raised within these pages, voices that are witness to life lived and lost, of joy, love and destruction.
Out of Sri Lanka
Ed. Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne and Shash Trevett
Penguin
₹599
swati.daftuar@thehindu.co.in
