Tags
Bridging Connections, Buddhadasa Galappathy, Poetry, Sivaramani, The Sweet and Simple Kind, Upul Karunatilleke, Wilhelm Ephraums, Yasmine Gooneratne
A number of poets have dealt with students and student life, in a range of approaches that is of course entirely appropriate for the subject.
I remember being particularly struck in the old days by a couple of poems written by Wilhelm Ephraums about his experiences at Peradeniya, though I have not included in the collection for the National Book Trust the one about evenings talking on a balcony with a friend, a simple experience that reverberates in the years that follow, as Yasmine Gooneratne too shows in her novel, The Sweet and Simple Kind.
The poem by Ephraums I did choose deals rather with the sense of loss that was so common, during the period he was at Peradeniya, when youngsters died seemingly at random in the upheavals of the late eighties. Continue reading