strands
  • Home
  • Competitions
    • Strands International Flash Fiction Competition >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Submit
    • Water - Short Story (May 31, 2017) >
      • Results
      • Important Dates
      • Rules
    • Fire - Short Story (Nov 30, 2016) >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Important Dates
  • Contact
  • Call for Submissions
  • Lit Sphere
    • Novels >
      • Mrs. Saville by Ted Morrissey
      • Shueli's Star by Anna Sujatha Mathai
    • Poetry
    • Visual Art
    • Short Fiction
    • Creative Nonfiction
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
Strands Publishers

LIT SPHERE

Ezine

Bird Seed (A Conversation between Two Colonials)

3/9/2018

1 Comment

 
Poetry
Indran Amirthanayagam 
You say, write
in English, sober up,
spring from your roots--
 
but the tubers
are Tamil, as well,
and Sinhalese,
 
and they dance
the baila
in Portugese.
 
“I am Carib, man,
I make coolie stew”--
thou art thy brother’s
 
keeper—yet you remind
me of English power,
thrust and thrum,
 
tuck and drum
and swimming silly
splashing
 
in the blue green
ocean which spawned
you and me--
 
and millions
of other blighters
who only saw Brighton
 
but eat bruised fruit now
blended into juice
that sticks polyglot
 
on the tongue.
Angst, you say,
 is German.
 
Catamaran,
I say, sails
from India.
 
Je suis fier,
proud and
mad hat
 
in awe of
the dictionary
of common language
 
that belongs
to no academy
and includes
 
what birds
bring
by night
 
at howling
speed
to nest
 
for a season
in these
English fields.

​
Picture
​Indran Amirthanayagam is a multilingual poet and diplomat. He has published 13 books thus far, including the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning, his poetic history of the Sri Lankan civil war, Uncivil War, and The Splintered Face:Tsunami Poems. He writes a blog occasionally at indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com. His latest books are Il n'est de solitude que l'ile lointaine, Ventana Azul and Pwezi a Kat Men. 
​ 
Photo credit: Fabienne Douce 

1 Comment
van escort link
7/2/2023 03:26:43 pm

En iyi van ilan sitesi burada. https://van.escorthun.com/

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Strands

    Fiction~Poetry~Translations~Reviews~Interviews~Visual Arts

    Archives

    November 2023
    October 2023
    July 2023
    October 2022
    March 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Competitions
    • Strands International Flash Fiction Competition >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Submit
    • Water - Short Story (May 31, 2017) >
      • Results
      • Important Dates
      • Rules
    • Fire - Short Story (Nov 30, 2016) >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Important Dates
  • Contact
  • Call for Submissions
  • Lit Sphere
    • Novels >
      • Mrs. Saville by Ted Morrissey
      • Shueli's Star by Anna Sujatha Mathai
    • Poetry
    • Visual Art
    • Short Fiction
    • Creative Nonfiction
    • Reviews
    • Interviews