Towards reclamation of awareness

The white American poet and writer Allen Ginsberg once said, 'The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world.

- by Malinda Seneviratne

That's what poetry does.'The world is too misnamed and misrepresented for people to make head or tail of it and obtaining awareness, perforce, is quite a challenge. We are caught in the swollen waters of consumerism, acquisition, competition and self image as individuals and collectively; and if rivers in spate toss us into unfamiliar banks, we dive right in, believing that we just cannot drown (how could we?)! We drown because we can’t swim, neither downstream (with the flow) or upstream (against the flow).

Poetry, if we go with Ginsberg, can offer pause. Good poetry, that is. Poets, even poor ones, offer insights, but if the narrative is uneven and lacking in cohesion (as most poetry collectives are), puffs of mediocrity quickly obliterate those rare illuminations. We learn very little.

Ramya Jirasinghe’s ‘Requisites’ is like a companion to someone on a quest, a journey out of ignorance and towards awareness of the eternal verities. It is fluid but is neither a trickle nor of monsoonal volume. Enough to quench thirst, enough to float a just-enough-room-for-one vessel. If it were the former, the reader would flounder, and if the latter, risk wreck and drowning.

It must take a lot of poetic skill to achieve such a delicate balance. Indeed, one might even wonder if such is possible. But we have in ‘Requisites’ the cover-to-cover elegance, insight and economy that are the defining attributes of good poetry.

Ramya is no novice though. Her ‘There is an island in the bone,’ published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize of 2007. ‘Love poems from a frangipani garden’ came out in 2018. Both are highly readable and re-readable, each containing more than a few poems that deserve a permanent place in any anthology of modern Sri Lankan poetry. And of course, she won the Gratiaen for her debut novel, ‘Father Cabraal’s recipe for love cake.’