A Second Sunrise: Poem

book synopsis/description:

The sea swallowed the sun splitting open, spraying crimson blood over the clouds. A Second Sunrise showcases the best poems of Cheran, an accomplished poet of our times. The Sri Lankan civil war looms over much of his work. Poems of the precariousness of love are interwoven with poems of war. The idyllic seascape of 1977 when Waves lap along the shore spreading within me the sea is ruined forever by the experience of war (1981–89). These are followed by poems of exile and the experience of the diaspora (1993–2003).

Now there is left only a great land wounded. No bird may fly over it until our return. Finally, 2004 onwards, there are poems that take us to the devastation of May 2009, by when The sea has drained away Tamil has no territory Kinships have no name.

With such a wide range, translators Lakshmi Holmström and Sascha Ebeling treat each poem both as fresh in its particularity and as part of the poet’s oeuvre. Their English renditions capture the resonances and rhythms that connect Cheran to a long Tamil poetic tradition that spans over two thousand years...