'Poetry is wonderfully cathartic' - Anne Ranasinghe

Having studied a few of her most touching poems such as Plead Mercy, Kabaragoya and On the beach, her poems evoked in me a sense of aversion for my own kind for the way we treat animals. She is well known for her poetry of animals, specially her collections like On the fifth day.

Anne Ranasinghe was borne in Essen, Germany in 1925. She left Germany for England on January 1939 at the age of 13. As a german Jew she witnessed the Holocaust first hand to which she lost her whole family. She has won a number of prizes including her very recent Kalasuri award in November 2005 and the Sahithyaratna in September 2007.

A poet of such calibre I thought appropriate for the debut of the Sunday Observer's newest page the Passionate pen.

Q: What's your process of creating a poem?

A: Every one has their own method of writing. Just a simple word, action, scene, music or emotion can trigger a poem, but it doesn't mean that the poem comes in one piece. Quite often you end up with something totally different from what you originally intended.

The problem with all Sri Lankan poets is that they believe the first draft is final and that you should not interfere with what you consider as 'inspiration'. It's very important to work on a poem and to fine it down to make it as sharp as possible. I believe the less you say the more you say. And this can't be done in the first draft.

Q: What is it like to be a poet in Sri Lanka, where there are so few poets?

A: There are a number of good emerging poets in Sri Lanka. But the problem is that the majority does not read enough to allow it to influence their own writing. The best is to read in as many languages as you can and translations as well. You have to develop your own style.

Q: Are you content with the kind of response you are getting from Sri Lankans?

A: I've been very well treated. I think people have been far too kind to me. They have been very appreciative and responsive. And they have adopted me as a Sri Lankan writer which is wonderful.

Q: How has your multiple origin affected your writing?

A: A Swedish critic suggested, referring to my poems, that someone should investigate the relevance of German being my mother tongue and English only my second language.

I stopped speaking German at the age of 13. I believe the more languages you know the better it is for your writing.

Q: I've heard that hardships make better artists. Is that true for you? Did the Holocaust make you a better poet?

A: It's very difficult to say. I started writing before the Holocaust and probably would have ended up a writer any way. I can't really say whether it has made me a better poet.

Q: What influenced your writing other than the Holocaust?

A: The holocaust is only one aspect of my life. All poetry is influenced by aspects such as love, life, death, hope and fear because human emotions are the basis of poetry.

Q: What do 'you' accomplish from writing poetry?

A: If I am, ultimately able to say what I originally intended to say, it gives me great satisfaction. You gather your thoughts, put it in to shape and find that, whatever problem you had before starting the poem has disappeared. It's wonderfully cathartic.

Q: Why the preoccupation with animals in your poetry?

A: I believe that the human being is just another animal. I've watched people dye as well as animals. I think we all belong to the same species. I find it absolutely appalling how animals are treated at the hands of humans.

In a country where Buddhism is predominant it's unacceptable. I have great love for animals. I use them to stress a point, but they can also symbolize human beings. Besides it's easier to write about animals than humans.

Q: What's the most favourite or memorable for you from your own poems and why?

A: Each poem relates to an experience, therefore becomes a part of my identity. I don't have a favourite.

Q: You are Jewish but some of your poems at least carry a hint of Buddhist philosophy. Why?

A: I find Buddhist philosophy very acceptable. No religion is exclusive and all religions have common principals and moral code. Buddhism seems to me very appropriate for the times we live in.

Q: You use a lot of local imagery and symbolism in your poetry. Is it an attempt to incorporate a Sri Lankan flavour to them?

A: I have lived in Sri for over 50 years and naturally my life has been influenced by my surroundings, by the people and by the history of the country. It's inevitable that this surfaces in my poetry.

Literacy Legacies

Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

"Writing in English was a form of cultural treason"

Borne in Manikhinna, Kandy in 1941 and educated at St. Thomas' Collage Mt. Lavinia, Lakdasa Wikkramasinha studied law for three years before deciding to make teaching his profession. An English instructor at the University of Kelaniya, he was married in 1974 and drowned in 1978.

Lakdasa Wikkramasinha is known to have been a constant poet, his works include Lustre Poems (1965), Fifteen Poems (1970), Nossa Senhora Dos Chingalas (1973), O Regal Blood (1975), and the Grasshopper Gleaming (1976). He was an eminent bilingual but contributed very little to Sinhala poetry, although he himself admitted that "writing in English was a form of cultural treason" and was extremely critical of the colonial regime.

It was clear through his own testimony that he was insecure about his lack of 'historical identity'.

His poems were often classified as bitter and resentful by critics. Among all his poems 'Cobra' is probably the most criticized.

Critics argue that Lakdasa is over sensational in his rather exaggerated description of the dead Cobra, that the poem is so weak and carelessly written that it does not justify such plagiarism, claiming that his poetry is a pathetic attempt to trick the westernized Sri Lankan reader by local imagery, symbolism and subject matter.

But he also has many supporters who likes to counter argue that the whole poem has been sadly misinterpreted.

He had an aristocratic ancestry and an aristocratic streak was a legacy that never left him. But it's also clear through poems like 'The death of Ashanthi' and 'Ysinno' that he felt compassion for the under dog of society - the under-privileged.

His stanza forms are quite varied and his poems have an undeniable local flavour to them with his hybridized language and Sri Lankan imagery.

Amateur Short story

An awakening

by Sudath Jayatissa Hewamadduma

Mother sat in a corner of the verandah and began to pick out the refused matters from the rice placing the winnowing fan on her lap. She was in a flower printed cloth which had once been beautiful.

Her emaciated body and the sorrowful face made a pain in my heart and a great sympathy arose from that pain towards her. She threw into her mouth a seed of rice and munching it began to contemplate. I saw her eyes fill with tears. She looked at the sky.

The sky was gloomy and the rainy clouds were floating showing the signs of a heavy rain. The ear-piercing noises of the frogs crying for more rain were disgusting in my ears.

I had a slight fear that the rain which was prevailing throughout a week would turn into a flood.

"Putha, rain might come any moment"

I heard mother's voice murmur around my ears. I looked at her in response. She winnowed the fan twice in a hurry and a bit of dust entered into my eyes. I crumpled my eyes as if I had great pain. A cold breeze blew suddenly, perplexed my eyes.

The dilapidated roof with many holes through the cadjans was in a verge of collapse. The cracked walls which had not been repaired for years were an agony to me. I looked a long while as if I would count the rafters placing my arms on my waist.

When I turned my eyes towards mother's I saw the hardship she had to undergo and the sorrow after the untimely death of my father. Vivid pictures of the past began to create before my eyes making me astonished. I had no strength to watch her sorrowful face any further. I stepped into the compound.

Loneliness and darkness were spreading in the environment. I, who had been stranded in a world of thoughts fell that my heart hurt with a peculiar torment as I embraced the sorrowful memories of our family again and again.

"I know for sure that there will be flood if the rain continues in this manner..." Mother's words on and off interrupted my thoughts.

I sat under the shady mango tree near the well. I could see the ridge of the paddy fields stretching in the distance. Rubber trees that spread their branches all around, had grown to a considerable height. Thick foliage concealing the gloomy rays of the sun soaked the environment in the darkness. I saw the sun disappearing through the dark rainy clouds far away. Then a slight drizzle began to wet the earth. I stood up.

"Putha, Darling don't get wet" mother called me in.

I lay on the camp-bed in a corner of verandah and looked at the roof. It was full of cobwebs and saw a spider making efforts to come out of a web. Though it tried several times to come out, all its efforts were in vain, and laid within the web itself listlessly.

"Mother I'm not going to school tomorrow" I said turning to the wall.

"don't come out with nonsense. Tomorrow is the first day of the term," mother said.

"my shirt is badly torn mother. The naughty children will cast remarks at me" I said hiding my face in the pillow to prevent my tears.

"I'll get it darned for you darling. Next week I'll do my best to buy you a shirt length..."

"Who will help us mother?"

Mother's trembling feet brought her near me, sad expressions on her face were innumerable. She sat beside me and stroked my head tenderly with the tips of her fingers.

I felt great sorrow mixed with an affection running through my body. I wiped the tears with my fingers and turned at her. Her face was full of innocent sadness.

"If your father had been alive, these things would not have happened to us" She could not prevent her sobbing and let her tears poured on to my chest. When I felt the wetness of her cheeks I felt how cruel I was and felt guilty of myself for making her shed tears.

"you must not cry mother, I'm here to avoid your loneliness", I consoled her.

I remembered my father suddenly. I have heard my relatives say that I was not even five years when my father died after a fall from a tree. I can recollect how my mother cried on the day my father passed away. That day I cried because my mother and others cried. When aunt Rosi took me to the compound and consoling me, I remember several women look at me saying "Oh poor innocent child".

The drizzle had gradually turned into a heavy rain. The whole verandah was wet with the rain water. Mother placed some pots on the floor to collect the water pouring through the gaps of roof. I stood on the bench and repaired the holes in the roof with a broomstick.

Mother sighed with pains several times and cursed the rain looking at the roof in that restless night. When her tears poured down her cheeks like the drops of water pouring from the roof, a sharp pain blocked in my heart. I opened the window in despair and a pinching cold brushed against my face.

The whole environment had been soaked with rain and darkness. When lightning struck, like a gutter from the sky. The torrencial rain prevailed for hours and hours mercilessly showing the signs of an unprecedented flood. I closed the window and went to my bed.

"Putha, Putha, wake up..."

I woke up with my sudden voice in my ears

"See the disaster, water has come near the door step" she said in fear without being able to control her inner feelings.

I rubbed my eyes as if I had a dream for I could not believe my mother's voice. I tightened my sarong and hurried to the compound with a torch in my hand. The heavy rain had no mercy.

I flashed the torch around the house and I was dumbfounded when I saw a tall coconut tree fallen across the well. I felt something strange had happened and a great fear throbbed in my heart for it was the tree that my father had fallen from when trying to pluck a young coconut for my mother.

I stepped further more to get a better view of the situation though a slight fear had covered me and saw the water flowing like a swollen river.

"Oh my God it's flood!...", I cried and ran into the house.

"Yes mother, water is coming fast. I think the lake bund has broken with the flood....

Villagers are running for their lives. There, do you hear the voices..."

"What a sin my deiyo! what shall we do now?"

Mother began to weep like anything.

"Hurry up mother, it is advisable for us to go somewhere immediately for our dear lives too.:

Mother was tongue-tied for a awhile and began to tremble with a reasonable fear.

"Oh! God... Have mercy on us..." She prayed raising her trembling hands towards the sky.

"Mother, Hurry up... The water will come into the house in a minute..."

Continued next week

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Would you like to see your words in print?

If you are a talented amateur poet or prose writer with a taste for quality literature, please email your authentic and original poems and short stories to [email protected] or post them to Passionate Pen, Sunday Observer, Associated Newspapers Ceylon Limited, Number 35, D. R. Wijewardene Mawatha, Colombo 10 to be featured on our new page Passionate Pen.

They may be written under any title, in any style and consist of 1,500 words or less. You can also look forward to outstanding interviews with leading personalities in the field of literature, in our quest to improve our readers' knowledge of quality literature.

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