Ishira’s exhilarating world of verses

Lathika Gunawardena

My Exciting World of Poetry, a collection of 50 poems composed by Ishira Liyanage, a Grade eight student of the Lyceum International School, Nugegoda, seems to me an oasis in a desert in this technological era, when there is a grave danger in Sri Lanka that children’s creative abilities may be overlooked and, when children are examination oriented and confine their enhancement of competencies to the school curriculum.

Our technological age requires creative thinkers who can approach problems with a fresh outlook, but it also needs people who have an awareness with a fresh outlook, but it also needs people who have an awareness and sensitivity towards the beauty around them.

For education to fulfill its purpose the cultivation of aesthetic sensibilities and the development of the means of self-expression are of fundamental importance. By learning to perceive, understand and react to aesthetic accomplishments of others, we accomplish ourselves to create perform and respond in a more artistic and thereby holistic way to ones environment.

I admire and appreciate the creativity of Ishira, the language, expressions, messages and her use of poetical strategies used in this composition.

The creative poet has shown her prowess in many a field. How Ishira has played with words is commendable for her age. She has used words to direct the reader’s attention upon some state of affairs, to present to them some items for consideration and to excite in them, some thoughts about these items. How she has used words is excellent and they give the real message to the reader. The poet has the right idea and she picks her words carefully with due regard to their effects; so it is she who gives us the mind pictures of the many topics like A Rain Forest and Nature. Relevant pictures drawn appeal to the minds eye. I like the poems because of their imagery. As lovers of nature, It makes us feel as if we are in a rain forest when we read this poem, and feel for nature, when we read the poems Nature and A day in the Wild.

Ishira is a lovely writer. Her language is strikingly simple, but still there is an expressible beauty in the word order. It is difficult to figure out how she works out the language with such dexterity.

She seems to be a versatile young poet who has covered so many aspects like Nature, Sports, Science, Experiences in school, Life, Emotions, Animals, Family and Colour. Ishira has selected some rare specimens such as the Vampire Bat, All My friends, Me, Tom and Jerry and envelopes each character into a stream of her own. Thereby the poems become more and more complex, attempting to depict more of an inner text than an outward story live.

The experiences of the poems are related from various stand points. The poet emerges as a story-teller, and then gradually detours into multifaceted areas where the focus of attention on one single point is conveyed to a multi-directional pattern like a fan unfolded.

The first poem Limerick she has composed, the comic form of five line poem with a rhyme scheme, clearly depicts her irony - humour, humorous or sarcastic, by the use of language of different or opposite tendency.

She had used a literacy technique, through which the readers can perceive hidden meanings unknown by the character.

The poem My Favourite Sport depicts Ishira’s world of imagination as a young one. Ishira may have composed the poem Being a Junior Prefect through her experience as a school Junior Prefect who has fully developed the concept of a school prefect.

As far as the reader of these fifty poems is concerned, the first significant feature is the expression of human experiences in a styles or non narrative form, devoid of a beginning, middle and end, as visible in the conventional form of poetry pattern.

This book shows Ishira’s inborn creative ability. Among special features of her poems, vision could be mentioned as one of the valuable features. A clear vision could be noticed in her many poems. Therefore she could be considered as an intuitive poet among other contemporary child poets.

This book is ample evidence for the abundance of talent and knowledge behind this budding poet. Her poetic creations have assisted to develop both pleasure and wisdom.

Having published Ishira’s maiden work, she should now try her hand at writing more and more poetry. I hope and wish that she will become a great poet in future. I wish her success!

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