Full Description
These poems emerged from journeys of great personal significance, and out of a migrant sensibility tied to three different countries. Sensuous, droll, yearning, they consider otherwise forgotten (ignored, repressed, erased) events.
In 2017, Vidyan Ravinthiran travelled to the north of Sri Lanka where his parents grew up - it finally felt safe - visiting war-torn Tamil areas overwritten by a tourist focus on the sun-spoiled South. In 2020, he, his wife and their one-year-old moved from Britain to the United States, months before the pandemic hit and the travel ban separated them for almost two years from family overseas.
Avidya is a political and a spiritual collection, whose multiple poetic forms, open and closed, are shaped by myth and philosophy, and by Sri Lankan as well as global crises. It is also a book about the forms of both strength and fear that parents pass on to their children.
Contents
9 As a
10 Your demon's basic
12 Next time
14 Trinco
16 Nanthikadal
17 Burnt palmyra
18 Leaving Jaffna
19 May 2021
20 The elephant
22 The elephant
23 Trinco
24 A fisherman
25 The last train
26 The Annupoorunyamal
27 My mother's English
28 Every year
30 Pillaiyar
32 Lasantha Wickrematunge
38 Autumn
40 Mourning
42 Sri Lanka
44 Rama's bridge
45 Karna
57 My face
59 Hillside temple
60 Orts
64 Travellers
65 Eelam
66 Research
68 Jaffna, January 15, 2023
70 The Star of India
71 As a child
