A candid soul of poetry

Prof. Siromi Fernando’s poetry is not only the impressions of life but also insight into the milieu. They seem to spring effortlessly from the bottom of her heart. Her philosophy of life is often expressed through her poetry. At times, her language is matter-of-fact and at other times, it is unassuming yet insightful. One of the salient characteristics of her poetry is candid voice and her observations are unbiased. Religiosity is a dominant motif in her poetry; her outlook of life is formed based on Christian ideology. Her love for motherland is manifested in the poem Beauty is home. However, she is of the view that feeling for motherland would not be pivotal to everyone’s life and it depends largely on one’s mission of life. Her subjects are vivid and she uses simple diction yet insightful.

Prof. Siromi Fernando Pic: Ranga Chandrarathne

Sense of place is a predominant theme in her poetry. Beauty is home and Flamboyant Time are some of the poems with strong sense of place.

Her sense of place is not merely a physical place but a place associated with loads of memories. For instance, in the poem Beauty is Home, the place is almost sacred to the poet. Nostalgia is also present in her poetry. Apart from the sense of place, nostalgia also plays a vital role in the above two poems.

In Flamboyant Time, it is nostalgia which plays a prominent role in conveying emotions. Although nostalgia often associates with happy memories, Prof. Siromi Fernando recalls past with a sense of mix feelings; Piliyandala Bus Depot is a poem which deals with unpleasant feelings or so did reality of urban Sri Lanka. Changing Home deals with an emotional change that brought about when the poet changed one home to another. It is a sense of dislocation and breaking up of social network in the process which created emotional upheaval albeit temporary in the mind of the poet.

By Ranga CHANDRARATHNE

“Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.”- Voltaire

“ Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.

We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such other cause. “- Aristotle in Poetics

Question: One of the thought provoking poems you have written is Base Line Road 1982, which vividly captures the stark reality of poverty and deprivation. However, the poem ends with a note of hope that life flourished amidst chaos, and flowers blossomed even in mud. Can you revisit the time and the milieu against which you wrote the poem?

Answer: I enjoyed revisiting the time and the milieu against which this poem was written. University life at that time was hard, because money was scarce. Work was difficult with work-loads heavy and research was a problem with insufficient books in the library, and the journals we yearned for could not be ordered. I belonged to the Faculty of Arts and supposedly to Humanities rather than Social Sciences. Since we did not contribute directly to technology, provisions for research needs were tightly limited. The brain drain was regularly drawing abroad graduates and academics from all faculties with the result that those who remained shouldered heavier burdens.

This was the deprivation we had at that time. Almost thirty years ago, I have written in this poem :

Royal through struggle

Ripe we will stand

Optimism

Today I discover that my early optimism does hold good. Through the struggles and difficulties of those years:

Ripe we stand,

Washed whenever the rain falls

Into fresh fruitfulness

Of the life that

Still

Spills

Beautiful.

Q: Flamboyant Time is one of your poems which vividly realises the very ambience of tropical beauty together with the merriment of nature and children. Does the poem associate with your childhood experiences?

A: Not really. At the time I wrote the poem, I was teaching Hopkins. I always loved flamboyant flowers, and I also loved Hopkins’ poetry. In this poem I just tried out some of Hopkins’ characteristics on the gorgeousness of flamboyants. I was very pleased when Prof. Kamal de Abrew (who had taught me) reviewed Navasilu 7 and 8, where this poem appeared, and commented on this as a “Hopkinsian piece”! I had loved flamboyants from the time when I travelled as a child in a rickshaw along Flower Road, which at that time was lined with flamboyant trees. However the poem is not associated with my childhood experiences but with my children’s childhood. At that time, there was a black leafless tree outside our window until suddenly green leaves sprouted and then by April and May, the red flamboyant flowers hung riotously in full blossom. I used to watch sparrows and squirrels, and my children playing in the green grass below. That’s the background of this poem.

Changes

Q: In the poem Changing Home, you capture the changes that would bring about for people when one moves from one locale to another. Such a change would be more profound when one moves from one country to another. How does a change of homes affect one’s emotional life?

A: My husband’s profession leads us to change our home addresses once in five or six years. Although it allows us the excitement of getting to know new people in new locales, it causes a wrench for us if we have let down roots in the earlier locale. How does it affect my emotional life? I think the answer is given at the end of the poem, but let me put it more explicitly. I am a Christian and therefore think rather differently from many other Sri Lankans. I believe that life on earth, wherever each temporary home might be, is a pilgrimage through the flawed locales we encounter. It is only when God (Christians believe in one creator God) ultimately transforms his ruined creation back into the perfect world he originally created, that I will inhabit a perfect, eternal permanent residence. So my emotional life is not too affected by constant changes – because I take these emotional wrenches as a part of my pilgrim experience, and look forward to a wonderful permanent locale one day. How does it affect others? Changes are often difficult, sometimes confusing.

But human beings are tough and if the new locale is equally or more interesting than the earlier locale, they settle down quite soon. The problem is for the old, the lonely, the poor, or when changes are for worse than for better. Such people or situations need to be supported by other members of the community until the settlement problems are made more secure.

Q: Devil – Middle Class is a poem which is something to do with perceptions. It is a poem coded with layers of meanings. How did you conceive the idea for this poem?

A:This poem deals with the Devil, evil, sin and heaven, as perceived of in Christianity. I am highly complimented that you feel the poem is coded with layers of meaning, and of course, a completed poem in the eyes of the reader takes on new meanings that the writer may only have been sub-consciously feeling. Sometimes a writer actually writes more simply, giving expression to his or her feelings without aiming at any profound meaning.

This is what probably happened in my writing of this poem, and your interpretation. I started with no clear conception on any idea. I was thinking about three people I knew, incidentally all men. The first one was a brilliant person who enjoyed dramatic circumstances and often pretended to be devilish and tyrannical.

He was actually gifted with excellent management skills in several fields and often kept his good heart well hidden. I describe this person first, a dramatic, colourful figure pretending to be a brilliant devil but not the Devil at all. The other two people were not at all brilliant, whose actions at one time annoyed me a great deal. I scribbled a little about all three, and it finally grew, without a pre-conceived theme, into a poem about what the Devil and sin really are.

Death

Q: In the poem cold death you attempt to define the very indefinable death. Death has been a recurrent theme in literature. How do you deal with the theme of death from a broader perspective?

A : Literature, and great poets, have often dealt with the theme of death very smartly. But whenever I, and all people I suppose, face the shock of death, we face the most terrible eventuality on this flawed planet of ours. How do I deal with it? My answer is given at the end of the poem, a Christian answer :

I held with hurting human hands

That slender bridge,

The Cross.

I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross to save each person from his or her sin and gives us the gift of eternal life after we die on this earth.

This gives us the wonderful opportunity of taking up again the relationships on earth that we sever when we die. If we accept this gift, we can sustain our relationships eternally and live in the perfect creation God originally intended. This is an almost unbelievable concept that makes death bearable. I don’t think I would be able to deal rationally with death without this knowledge.

Beauty

Q:The poem 'Beauty is Home' vividly realises the tropical beauty of Sri Lanka apart from stressing on the intrinsic value of home. Could you define the pivotal role that home plays in our emotional life which also associated with one’s motherland?

A : In this poem, I describe a particular spot you reach after crossing a bridge, which was once fairly close to one of our earlier homes. So this description is associated with Sri Lanka and also with home. To many working mothers the safety of their loved ones at home is pivotal. In my case, the beauty of what I saw around would have turned into a nightmare if I had found that anybody at home was in danger. So home, or loved ones at home are pivotal to ordinary working women. I think it goes together with a woman’s ordinary nature.

But I cannot speak for housewives, or men, or working women who have acquired to some extent some masculine tendencies as well. I suspect that home is important for all human beings, but I would be presumptuous if I define the role of home for those unlike myself.

What about home as associated with the motherland, or Sri Lanka? I wish it would be pivotal to everyone.

But when scores of past students come and say farewell to me on their way to Australia, Canada or greener pastures anywhere, and even more when they call me on special days from overseas and say how happily they are getting on, I wonder whether the motherland is really pivotal in their emotional life.

Of course I give them a final lecture before they go about serving their motherland and who will be left to serve if all of them go.

But these are the realities today. Maybe home, motherland etc. is important to some extent, but what is pivotal to each person could be those components they feel are essential for their own mission in life.

Realities

Q: The poem Piliyandala Bus Depot deals with everyday realities that one is confronted with in Sri Lankan society. Tar and dirt are potent symbols of decadent society, which is common to most Asian and African countries. How did you conceive the idea?

A : The poem describes the Piliyandala Bus depot, a place I used to pass, at one time, twice a day on my journey to and from work. I didn’t consider it a place of decadent society, I thought it my real-life surroundings. Some of the lines in the poem “these scraps, And dirty paper wraps” are more reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s Preludes depicting England. Of course, tar and dirt are symbolic of present urban Asia, which I am most familiar with, and possibly of Africa, which I haven’t visited.

I would prefer to use the phrase “a disorganized, developing society” in your question instead of “decadent society”, since I resent Sri Lanka being referred to as decadent.

How did I conceive the idea? That is a question I can’t answer, because I usually don’t conceive an idea when I set out to write ‘a poem’! I just scribble about something I’m interested in, and later sometimes the scribbling and several revisions develop into what seems significant enough to consider a poem.

Frequently I pick up an abstract idea or two on the way, or link up with a concept I have been mulling around in my mind for some time. In this poem, the theme became the concept that thought and feeling, which are exciting forces, often run ahead of what we can actually achieve.

This achievable reality, which in this case was accompanied by tar, dirt etc., is a “steadying tide”, which keeps thought and feeling from flinging us into destruction of all types, which is exciting but also destructive. Readers can build different ideas into this basic concept, but as for me, the concept grew very gradually while I was sitting in crowded 120 buses to and from Piliyandala.

Barriers

Q: Barriers deal with diverse kinds of barriers. They are everywhere, yet we try to build ‘nesting-places’. The poem associates closely with your experience in Sri Lankan academia. As a poet, how do you perceive barriers in life?

A : Barriers in social life are extremely distressing phenomena. This poem deals with barriers in general, be they class, caste, racial, cultural, religious, linguistic etc. It is not associated with Sri Lankan academia, where I have been among friends and pleasant co-workers at my workplace, enjoying more or less homely “warm mud and wattle” and not suffering “depression…..of endless days”.

This probably sprang from a few moments of resentment I experienced when I stood in one of two queues overseas and Sri Lankans in my queue were singled out for specially nasty treatment.

This may have been an over-reaction and guilty of a little hyperbole or exaggeration, but whatever the origin of the poem is, its main point is that the types of barriers that are confronted with in life cause some, especially the very poor, to spend an “ever-wakefulness of existence Without night”.

This is something everyone should place in the forefront of our agenda and work tirelessly to break down such barriers.

Q: The poem Crazy Parabolic Swerves of Life narrates the anxieties and stresses in academic life. It is like a speeding wheel that you are caught up with. Looking back on your dynamic academic life, how do you perceive academic life in Sri Lanka?

A : This poem doesn’t speak only about the anxieties and stresses in academic life. It includes all parts of my life as experienced at the time the poem developed.

It includes academic life, with its abstract concepts, as well as the disorganized but what I saw as a humane scheduling of my work time ; transport in “dusty private buses” symbolizing the activities necessary in general life ; and life with many people symbolizing commitments outside academic life.

So this is really about the life of a working woman, and the stresses and strains she has to cope with in all these components.

Now that I am past retirement and the “speeding wheel” is beginning to slow down, I can look back and literally thank God that some useful service has been done despite the “crazy swerves of life”.

But your question is actually about my perception of academic life in Sri Lanka. I enjoy academic life since teaching and research lie within my aptitudes. Academic life in Sri Lanka is slightly different and my aptitudes had to be suitably adjusted. Work was sometimes a struggle, because we are still a poor country unable to provide excellent facilities like magnificent research libraries etc.; often hard, sometimes with excessive workloads and problems of strikes, clashes etc.; but always a challenge.

In the Sri Lankan universities, especially in Faculties of Arts, one meets the widest possible cross-section of society. Many come from deprived homes.

These students need insightful, understanding academics who can apply their knowledge and research to direct students.

The students can use the theory and skills they learn, to deal with Sri Lanka’s problems and their own. In the Department of English, where I work, some come from affluent homes as well, and are not aware of difficulties of their batchmates, or are reluctant to make friends with them.

These students need academics who can disseminate the theoretical background about other strata of the population, practical experience of how these other strata perceive and feel, and strategies that can be employed to integrate all strata in Sri Lanka in order to live together in fulfilment and peace.

These are the exciting challenges that are available to university academics in Sri Lanka. For others who want more affluent resources and equipment, luxurious homes and salary scales, secure and safe opportunities, prospects etc. for their children and themselves, academic life in Sri Lanka is risky and unsatisfactory. Don’t misunderstand me.

Things like facilities, houses, prospects etc. need upgrading. But fulfilment in academic life in Sri Lanka depends on whether you can take knowledge and responsibly research, apply, adapt and still enjoy your efforts as an attractive adventure. And academic life in Sri Lanka is for you, depending on your answer.

The general public often condemns universities. They avoid sending their children to universities for fear of ragging, strikes etc. and spending unnecessary time completing their studies. This is natural for the public, since they have no say in changing university conditions. But academics have some ability and responsibility to improve conditions.

They need to stand by their universities, and make their environment sufficiently safe and happy for students, including their own children. I am proud that my children have studied there. They graduated after 5 ½ years obtaining 4 year degrees.

They lost their seniority by about 2 years. But their education gained by added knowledge of the society they continue to work in, and achieved resilience, maturity and lasting friendships with people of all strata. Academic life has improved greatly since 1988 when this poem was written.

But I hope my children’s generation and future generations will continue to upgrade university life while holding on to sound values and principles while facing difficult challenges.

Jaxtaposition

Q: In the poem Two Universities Compared (Colombo, Sri Lanka versus California, Los Angeles), you juxtaposition different realities of two universities; University of Colombo and University of California. In a way, it is a comparison of two worlds; developing and developed. Do you think that the harsh realities of Sri Lankan universities will change for better even in decades?

A : You have recognized that in this poem I have juxtapositioned the different realities of UOC and UCLA, and that my comparison is of almost two different worlds. That’s correct.

But you have misinterpreted the theme. I didn’t compare the developing and the developed worlds. What I compare is “life – though contorted with non-life – though elegantly shaped”.

Which do you prefer – life or non-life? I haven’t attempted to underplay the problems in UOC – in fact, I may have even exaggerated.

But I also present my homesickness for UOC, and the red, pulsing life of the students. In contrast I present UCLA with its notices about Gay meetings, Lesbian colloquia, apartments, cars for sale etc.

To me this seemed like colourless, self-contained, dead non-life. This is the theme. You also seem to have a rather negative idea of Sri Lankan universities, by referring to its “harsh realities”.

You seem doubtful that there will be improvement even in the subsequent decades. I think you need to see the positive qualities of UOC as well. I don’t have time here to convince you of some of the genuinely good, responsible qualities of the UOC students, especially the students of the Arts Faculty.

But I must tell you a true story before I finish. Last year I was suddenly hospitalized for urgent open-heart surgery.

Before the surgery, four pints of blood needed to be donated. Three of the donors were Arts Faculty boys, one not even a student I taught or knew but who was contacted by one of my own students.

After donating the blood they visited me in my hospital bed before they left and wished me well, each according to his own religious beliefs. This is the type of warm red, pulsing life that I talk about in the poem. Knowing that I worked in the university, the doctors asked me which Faculty I came from. And I replied “I’m from the best Faculty”. I don’t need to tell you why.