Appreciating Sunil Govinnage

K S Sivakumaran

As most of us who love literature me too like poetry in English and Tamil. I like the poems by a Lankan born bilingual Australian poet's poems in English. He is Sunil Govinnage who writes with a 'Lankan-consciousness' meaning bringing out the familiar Lankan idiom, if we call it that, to a foreign audience.

There are a handful of Lankan born writers living abroad and a most writers living in Lanka writing in English the hallmark of typical Lankan Culture. But ironically those who write exotic fiction and poetry for a foreign market get the necessary publicity. Michael Ondaatjee and Romesh Gunasekera might have been born in Lanka, but their heart and soul is basically is akin to western consciousness. They are almost idolized as Icons in contemporary Lankan English Literature.While congratulating them and another overrated writer Shyam Selvadurai for their recognition abroad, I feel that real creative writers in English are unheard and unsung locally.

Being in Australia

Had Sunil Govinnage not published his collection of Australian Poetry - Perth: My Village Down Under, I would have missed enjoying some fine poetry in English by a local writer who is now an expatriate writer in Australia. His 418-page book is published by Sarasavi Publishers. It has nine sections under which his poems are clustered together thematically.

They are: Prologue, The Journey Begins, Perth: My Village Down Under, Life in the New World, My Big Village: Australia, Poems for Sri Lanka: My Other Village, Travel Poems, Love Poems, and Epilogue.

It is a tribute to Professor Emeritus Thiru Kandiah, one of our senior academics specializing in Linguistics.

There are two long essays by him. However, I must confess my limited understanding and the heavy academic style of his writing did not allow me to get what he was saying in his first essay.

Look at the typically academic title that baffles anyone like me. This is the title of the first essay by respected Prof Thiru Kandiah, who is himself a progeny of a Tamil father and a Sinhala mother. 'Home', Diaspora and post-coloniality in Sunil Govinnage's poetry: Nurturing the new-found home, giving back to the 'lost' one "On the other hand Thiru Kandiah's second essay is a brilliant critique on -"Sunil Govinnage's poetry of the Sri Lankan diaspora: modernity, tradition, ethno-religious conflict, and the post-colonial alternative that there is..."

Snapshots captured

Let us look at some of his poems which I liked very much for his remembering of his early life in Lanka and on some visits here which show his cleverness in capturing snapshots that though seemingly commonplace and yet creatively picturised. These show his "Lankanness" in my point of view. The following poem appears under the category-"Poems for Sri Lanka: My other Village"

My Sri Lanka

My Sri Lanka is an arranged marriage,

I cannot divorce her.
I cannot just leave her behind
Like a postal ride.
Sri Lanka follows me like a shadow.
Sri Lanka is the blood of my veins
Nourishing my body,
Giving me power to think, cry love.
Even to laugh.
My Sri Lanka is an airport
Where the planes from east and west meet
In this teardrop-shaped island.
My Sri Lanka is a library
Of tragedies and comedies
In popular novels in several volumes
Written by black, white, green and yellow writers
With their postcolonial slant.
Perhaps some see her as a rotten egg,
But for me, she is the staple food
Nourishing every molecule in my body.
Sri Lanka is my resting ground
Where I go to sleep every night,
When people in my home country hand out labels,
Question my accent, ask my name and stab my back.
Sri Lanka is the land
Where I go to rest
In my sleep.
Buried Love
While you read him the poems I shared with you
I sit here like an ancient statue
Buried in an unknown location in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka: A Faded Memory
My Sri Lanka
A far away land
Hanging onto my fading memory
Like a childhood dream.
My Sri Lanka
Sheds tears
Onto the Indian Ocean
Weeps like a young widow.

One of Govinnage's poems in Sinhala translated into English by the reputed translator Dr Lakshmi de Silva reads like this:

Thunder at Night

The sky does not wall like a kookaburra
It mumbles bombastic words like a drunkard
The enemy challenging me to battle
Is General Lightning armed with silver arrows.
Terrified, prostrate, hiding in my lone bed
Sending my mind to lie with my father's grave
I embrace the darkness.
The Kelani River is a raft of dreams
The verses of the Triple Gem chanted
By pious pilgrims climbing to the Sacred Footprint
Dive down from the womb o the sky
Curd and honey; a sweetness
Tasted only in dreams!
Awakening at midnight
Till the sun comes to birth
I cut through the darkness
Pacing pathways of thought.

Another bilingual academic Professor Emeritus Ranjini Obeyesekere has translated this Sinhala poem by Sunil Govinnage into English.

A Wasteland

Though I have reached the limits of learning
I have nothing to write about
Though I have eaten the most flavourful food
Not a taste remains on the tip of my tongue.
Though I indulge in learned verbiage
I have nothing meaningful to sat
Though memories remain etched in my heart

My heart is a wasteland where a poem dies.

Sunil Govinnage's other poems in this collection are also a treat to relish.

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