Out of Sri Lanka

Poetry Book Society Special Commendation

Sri Lanka has thrilled the foreign imagination as a land of infinite possibility. Portuguese, Dutch and British colonisers envisioned an island of gems and pearls, a stopping-point on the Silk Road; tourists today are sold a vision of golden beaches and swaying palm trees, delicious food and smiling locals. This favours the south of the island over the north rebuilt piecemeal after the end of the civil war in 2009, and erases a history of war crimes, illicit assassination of activists and journalists, subjugation of minorities, and a legacy of governmental corruption that has now led the country into economic and social crisis.

This first ever anthology of Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry – many exiles refuse to identify as “Sri Lankan” – features 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. 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.

‘My anthology of the year was Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English poetry from Sri Lanka and its diasporas (Bloodaxe), edited by Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne and Shash Trevett, which is everything an anthology should be: conscientious, archival, surprising, world-building, full of voices and lives.’ – Jeremy Noel-Tod, Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year 2023)

‘A vast range of subject matter is included, from landscape-pastoral to the horrors of conflict. Valuable not just as a collection of admirable poetry, but also as a historical record, this should be on the shelf of every library.’ – Frank Startup, The School Librarian

‘The trueness of this anthology lies not just in its celebration of Sri Lanka’s multilingual traditions, but in its recognition that poets writing about the country in various languages and from different locations can converse and, at times, speak as one.’ – Manan Kapoor, Harvard Review

‘This generous, essential anthology of “Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas” is endlessly varied, moving and enlightening … While it is, of course, focused on specific histories and experiences, the suffering and the questions it raises remain painfully resonant for the wider world at the ruinous close of 2023.’ – Simon Barraclough, Broken Sleep Books (Books of the Year 2023)

Vidyan Ravinthiran was born in Leeds, to Sri Lankan Tamils. His first book of poems, Grun-tu-molani (Bloodaxe Books, 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 Books, 2019) won a Northern Writers Award and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. After teaching at the universities of Cambridge, Durham and Birmingham in the UK, he now teaches at Harvard in the US. He is the author of Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (Bucknell, 2015), winner of both the University English Prize and the Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism. On top of his academic work, he writes literary journalism, and is represented as an author of fiction by the Wylie Agency.  

Seni Seneviratne, a writer of English and Sri Lankan heritage, is published by Peepal Tree Press, with books including Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin (2007), The Heart of It (2012), and Unknown Soldier (2019). Unknown Soldier is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a National Poetry Day Choice and was highly commended in the Forward Poetry Prizes 2020. She has been widely published in several anthologies and magazines, most recently in 100 Queer Poems (Penguin), Where We Find Ourselves (Arachne Press), Wretched Strangers (Boiler House Press), The Rialto and New England Review. She has collaborated with filmmakers, visual artists, musicians and digital artists and is one of ten commissioned writers on the Colonial Countryside Project. She is a fellow of the Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry, with work included in Ten: new poets from Spread the Word, ed. Bernardine Evaristo & Daljit Nagra (Bloodaxe Books, 2010). She is currently working on an LGBTQ project with Sheffield Museums entitled Queering the Archive and completing her fourth collection which will be published by Peepal Tree Press in autumn 2023. For more information see <a href="http://www.seniseneviratne.com/">www.seniseneviratne.com</a>

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 poetry has appeared in anthologies and journals (including Poetry, Poetry London and The North), she has read widely across the UK and is a winner of a Northern Writers’ Award. 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.