In 2009, near the end of the Sri Lankan civil war—between the LTTE demanding a separate Tamil homeland, and the government—innocent civilians were used as a human shield by one side, and taken as identical with terrorists by the other. They were shelled and fired on indiscriminately. There is an obvious parallel with events occurring as we speak.
The first ever anthology of Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry—many exiles refuse the label, “Sri Lankan”—features over a hundred poets writing in English, or translated from Tamil and Sinhala. It 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 works in traditional and in open forms, concrete poems, spoken word poems, and experimental post-lyric hybrids. The connection is an ethics and aesthetics of witness, challenging those who would erase, rather than enquire into, Sri Lanka’s troubled past.
On Friday, November 3, from 5-7 pm in the Thompson Room in the Barker Center, two of the anthology's co-editors, Shash Trevett and Vidyan Ravinthiran (who teaches in our English Department), will host two poets and a translator from the anthology: V.V. Ganeshananthan, Cheran, and Chamini Kulathunga. Books will be on sale. This event is supported by the English Department’s Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Initiative.
https://harvard.zoom.us/j/94273978209?pwd=emRFWDNLbUpSQ0NyWDBoTUZVc3hoZz09