Two books on contemporary writing from Sri Lanka

Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala, & English Poetry from Sri Lanka & Its Diasporas, published by Bloodaxe Books in June 2023, is described by its editors, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne, and Shash Trevett, as the “first true anthology of Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry”. The volume brings together 138 poets and over 300 poems written in, or translated from, the island’s three main languages: Tamil, Sinhala, and English.
The anthology is structured to resist the linguistic and geographical segregation that has historically defined Sri Lankan literature since independence in 1948.The editors chose an alphabetical ordering of poets, creating “serendipitous connections,” allowing disparate voices to “find a way of living alongside each other” and erasing potential biases in selection.
The collection includes work from poets who remained in Sri Lanka during the 1983–2009 civil war and those forced into exile. It features a wide range of voices, from internationally renowned figures to previously obscure or out-of-print poets, including several whose work appears in translation for the first time.The editors made the deliberate choice to exclude poetry that “cheerleads violently” for either the Sinhalese-dominated government or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), focusing instead on a “poetry of witness”.
The poems explore the legacy of colonialism, the horrors of the civil war, the 1970s/80s insurrections, the 2004 tsunami, and the complex, shifting meaning of “home” for the diaspora.
 

 

 

 

Time will Write a Song for You: Contemporary Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka, published in 2014 by Penguin Books India in association with the French Institute of Pondicherry, is an anthology edited by Kannan M. and others.
The anthology documents a significant paradigm shift in Sri Lankan Tamil poetry, moving from traditional verse and religious themes to “free verse” that grapples with modern trauma.

 

Article about the book

 

Out of Sri Lanka is a multilingual and multi-ethnic collection, bringing together Tamil, Sinhala, and English voices to resist the “linguistic segregation” that has historically divided the country.

Time will Write a Song for You focuses exclusively on contemporary Tamil writing, documenting the “cultural awakening” and paradigm shift specifically within the Tamil poetic tradition.

The overlapping contributors represent both the foundational figures of modern Sri Lankan Tamil poetry and the contemporary voices of the diaspora. Both books feature the “poets of the sixties”, Mahakavi, Murugaiyan, and Neelavanan. These writers are credited with breaking away from traditional religious themes to adopt a conversational diction that shaped the “modernist slant” of the island’s Tamil literature.

Key figures from the 1970s and 80s who shifted focus to social crises and ethnic conflict appear in both, including M.A. Nuhman, V.I.S. Jayapalan, and Shanmugam Sivalingam. Both anthologies highlight Cheran as a central figure, along with other shared expatriate poets include A.M. Rashmy, Packiyanathan Ahilan, Ki. Pi. Aravindan, and S. Vinothini.

Female poets who recorded the trauma of war, S. Sivaramani, are included in both.

 


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
NR (4 mars 2026). Two books on contemporary writing from Sri Lanka. SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS. Consulté le 10 mai 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15t82


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