Happy Book Birthday to our Summer Special Commendation! This is the first ever anthology of Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry featuring over a hundred poets writing in English, or translated from Tamil and Sinhala. It brings to light a long-neglected national literature, and 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.
There are poems here about love, art, nature – and others exploring historic events from the Marxist JVP insurrections of the 1970s and 80s, the 2004 tsunami and its aftermath to more recent bombings. The civil war between the government and the separatist Tamil Tigers is a haunting and continual presence. This is a poetry of witness which challenges all those who would erase the country’s troubled past and affirms the imperative to remember.
Order your copy here with 25% off for PBS Members