Tags
Avvai, Bridging Connections, BUT EVERY GULL IS NOT CALLED JONATHAN L, Dry Season: Riverside, I’m A Man Because You Are A River, Lal Hegoda, Mahakavi, National Book Trust, Poetry, R Cheran, Richard de Zoysa
In 2007, the National Book Trust published a collection of Sri Lankan Short Stories I had edited, entitled ‘Bridging Connections’. Typically, it has not sold well in this country. This is a pity, because it also introduced stories written originally in Sinhala and Tamil. It would have been good for at least the English speaking who did not know one or other of those languages to appreciate thoughts they otherwise could not register.
In India the book has done very well, and is being translated into all the other official Indian languages. I have since been asked to compile a similar collection of poetry, a task I was more worried about, given the much greater knowledge required to judge the merits of poetry in languages in which one is not a literary expert. However, I have received much assistance from friends, and strangers to whose kindness I am indebted.