Grun-tu-molani

By Vidyan Ravinthiran

Vidyan Ravinthiran's much-anticipated first collection contains many poems about Sri Lanka which fuse politi, personal history and myth. Yet his voice pitches itself not so much halfway between East and West as between emotional forthrightness and linguistic exuberance. Traditional forms contend with brusquer impulses in an era of technological distortion; without taking himself too seriously, the poet asks if perhaps we don't take ourselves seriously enough. These are poems of impassioned intelligence, which refuse to separate thought and feeling and seek not only to delight and disturb but to work through difficult problems. The intricacies of the modern relationship are reconnected with the historical world; translations, some from classical Tamil, ask how close two languages or two people can get. Indeed, Grun-tu-molani is concerned throughout with a range of human behaviours common to different societies -the need to assert oneself, save face, explain, and touch; the last of which would not be possible were it not for the distances between us. 'Gripping is not a word you usually associate with poetry, but Vidyan Ravinthiran's poems are precisely that, and they seldom let go. They are full of surprising turns (and turns of phrase), and their humour can make you squirm, as humour should… A ferocious intelligence is at work in these poems, whose stylish armoured exterior reflects sometimes a literary scholar and sometimes a displaced person; sometimes contemporary Britain and sometimes ancient Sri Lanka' -Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780371320

Vidyan Ravinthiran

Vidyan Ravinthiran is an Associate Professor at Harvard University, and the author of two books of poetry, as well as Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (Bucknell UP, 2015), winner of both the University English Prize and the Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism.

Book preview

VIDYAN RAVINTHIRAN

GRUN-TU-MOLANI

Vidyan Ravinthiran’s much-anticipated first collection contains many poems about Sri Lanka which fuse politics, personal history and myth. Yet his voice pitches i   tself not so much halfway between East and West as between emotional forthrightness and linguistic exuberance. Traditional forms contend with brusquer impulses in an era of technological distortion; without taking himself too seriously, the poet asks if perhaps we don’t take ourselves seriously enough.

These are poems of impassioned intelligence, which refuse to separate thought and feeling and seek not only to delight and disturb but to work through difficult problems. The intricacies of the modern relationship are reconnected with the historical world; translations, some from classical Tamil, ask how close two languages or two people can get. Indeed, Grun-tu-molani is concerned throughout with a range of human behaviours common to different societies – the need to assert oneself, save face, explain, and touch; the last of which would not be possible were it not for the distances between us.

‘Gripping is not a word you usually associate with poetry, but Vidyan Ravinthiran’s poems are precisely that, and they seldom let go. They are full of surprising turns (and turns of phrase), and their humour can make you squirm, as humour should… A ferocious intelligence is at work in these poems, whose stylish armoured exterior reflects sometimes a literary scholar and sometimes a displaced person; sometimes contemporary Britain and sometimes ancient Sri Lanka’

–

ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA

COVER PAINTING

Orange and Yellow (1956) by Mark Rothko

Oil on canvas; 237.5 x 186.7 x 7 cm

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1956

© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko /

Artists Rights Society, New York, and DACS, London

VIDYAN RAVINTHIRAN

Grun-tu-molani

‘Grun-tu-molani,’ the old queen said.

‘What’s that? What does she say?’

‘Say, you want to live. Grun-tu-molani. Man want to live.’

‘Yes, yes, yes! Molani. Me molani. She sees that? God will reward her, tell her, for saying it to me. I’ll reward her myself. I’ll annihilate and blast those frogs clear out of that cistern, sky-high, they’ll wish they had never come down from the mountains to bother you. Not only I molani for myself, but for everybody. I could not bear how sad things have become in the world and so I set out because of this molani. Grun-tu-molani, old lady – old queen. Grun-tu-molani, everybody!’ I raised my helmet to all the family and members of the court. ‘Grun-tu-molani. God does not shoot dice with our souls, and therefore grun-tu-molani.’

SAUL BELLOW,

Henderson the Rain King

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks go to Sarah Howe and Leontia Flynn for helping me edit some of these poems. Many of which (all of them, maybe) would never have been written, and would certainly never have made it this far, if it weren’t for the support of my parents and my girlfriend Jenny Holden. I hope this book expresses something of my love.

I am grateful to Selwyn College, Cambridge, for awarding me a research fellowship which