Poet walks passing your home
Ruwini Jayawardana
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Talented poet: Radha Ranjini Jayawardena
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POETRY: Poetry is not what you read. You need to understand the
hidden meaning intertwined between the lines of a poem. That is why you
would superficially label a poem as uninteresting says Radha Ranjini
Jayawardena, Principal of St. Mary’s College, Dehiwala, an up and coming
poet.
A reader of poetry does not need knowledge of the language alone. He
or she also requires knowledge about topics related to history,
literature and the society to understand the message conveyed by the
poet.
“My grandfather was a scholar. He used to write a lot of books
regarding Christianity. He was the first principal of the Bolawalana
Training College. I have never seen him but I believe that I inherit
some of his characteristics. Writing is in my blood,” she said.
Radha was educated at Holy Family Convent, Kalutara, Holy Family
Convent, Bambalapitiya and Sumangala Girls’ College, Panadura. She had
written poetry in both the Sinhala and English medium from her childhood
and had seen many of them in print on the newspapers and magazines.
Concept
“I do not base my poems on a particular subject. When a concept comes
to my mind I put it down on paper in my leisure period,”she explained
adding that she has nearly 200 poems to her name.
‘I walked passing your home’, the first volume of her collection will
be published in two months. Two more volumes are set to follow the
first.
The title of her debut volume derives from a poem included in the
collection. It is a poem about the suffering of a girl who had been
jilted by her lover. It traces her emotions till she finds the courage
to walk by her ex-lover’s home. Radha said that she got the idea for
this poem by observing a real life situation.
“I wrote a poem about the tsunami titled ‘Imanust’. It questions the
reader asking that if people can unite in tragedy why can’t they unite
in other events. If we work together we will be able to overcome any
problem despite caste, class, ethnicity or religion.”
Another of Radha’s poems,’You woman’ is about the injustice directed
at women.
Harsh tone
“I have used a very harsh tone in addressing this issue. Society
still hesitates to welcome females into the world. We speak about
equality but the reality is that female infants are being killed in a
number of places around the world,” she pointed out.
“My aim is to educate women through this poem. Just because you are a
female do not give in to injustice.”
One of her poems is about happiness. Happiness means different things
to different individuals. For Radha it means to live in peace.
We have become conformists today. We look aside when an anti social
activity takes place because that is the easy way out. That is very
selfish of us and it is no wonder that the whole social system is
falling apart,” she exclaimed.
Anger and sorrow
“My writing is also a form of expressing my anger and sorrow. Our
country has an ample amount of resources but compared to countries with
less resources we are less industrious. In this psychological condition
my emotions flow out of my pen.”
A significant poem in Radha’s collection is a poem titled ‘Death be
proud’.
“I was inspired by John Donne’s poem ‘Death, don’t be proud’. The
idea came from a news item that I read on how a number of people were
killed by contract killers for working against a politician. Death
benefits from such actions so I evoked to death to be proud,” she
expressed.
The poetess had been selected a semi finalist for an international
poetry competition organised by poetry.com. Hence she would get the
chance to see her poem, ‘Adult world’, in print in the book of ‘Immortal
verses’.
Pic: Mahinda Vithanachchi
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