Sinhala lyrics from down under

Reviewed by Kalakeerthi Dr. Edwin Ariyadasa

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness a lovesickness.”
- Robert Frost (1874-1963) American Poet.

Please picture this scenario.

In metropolitan London, a thronging, crowding and pressing multitude of cosmopolitan men and women, is milling around in an eddying human whirlpool.

Their polyglot verbal exchanges, do not penetrate the linguistic barriers, some individuals have built around themselves. Inside this enormous gathering, you begin to get the sense of being helplessly alone.

Voices

Suddenly, a hand is raised. Someone has recognised you. Above the persisting din of voices in varying lingos, he hails you. Kohomada? (How are you?).

The gesture of intimacy dispels your loneliness within that swarming milieu. You respond with an empathetic glee. Hondai, hondai (I am all right).

Consider a parallel situation.

A vast wave of literary productions, unleashed by the global diaspora has begun to flood the landscape of contemporary publishing. This process has gone on for some time now.

New literary voices, fresh language rhythms, innovative dictions, idioms that sound peculiar and intriguingly unfamiliar vocabularies, form an integral part of this diasporic literary stream.

Globe

We in Sri Lanka, confined to our own little corner of the globe, are nudged into alertness by an occasional Sri Lankan diasporic voice.

A handful of the Sri Lankan members of the global diaspora, has eminently succeeded in moving us profoundly, allowing us to overhear the soul-cries, that emerge from the depth of their inner recesses. One of those – poet Sunil Govinnage spins memorable lyrics, to achieve cathartic release from those sharp diasporic pangs.

His anthology of poems Mathaka Divaina (The Remembered Isle), is in effect, a series of entries relating to the events that take place in his psyche. This way, these poetic pieces, differ vastly from the routine diary – entries you make, to record your day-to-day events.

In this work, the poet traces the evolution of his harrowing nostalgia, for the climes, times and intimacies he left behind, to merge into the identity-less migrant diaspora.

To begin with, the host ethos is alluringly fresh, filling the poet's inner being with an overwhelming administration. This is a riveting new world (Nava Lova).

The initial enthusiasm makes the poet pledge – that he will inhabit this host-ethos to the end of his day.

The dream begins to fade, assaulted by the nostalgic urges that keep on asserting themselves.

An entity at home, now in this host-home, he is a nonentity. The poet laments.

Alienation

The torturing alienation is recounted in a series of incantatory stanza, in the piece titled Pitastarya (The Outsider).

It is perhaps, poet Sunil Govinnage, who has been able to capture with praiseworthy effectiveness the gradual settings of the diasporic nostalgia.

Sunil Govinnage gives poetic tongue to the travails of millions of migrants souls who because they are creatively inarticulate, are compelled to suffer an alienated, nationless and identity-less form of semi-existence, with hearts that silently lament – in the midst of all the paraphenalia of material success.

He is a poetic sociologist and a lyrical psychologist of the ways of the nostalgic life, the members of the diaspora lead – possessing the whole world but possessing no home.