First, from the author’s detail from the book itself:
“ Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He has more than 1,700 poems on his blog. His poems were published in several journals, including the American Journal of Poetry. His first book of poems called Kite Dreams was well received.”
Driftwood - an anthology of poems of 166 pages is published by Sarasavi publishers and priced at Rs.450. There are 90 poems in all. He has a blog: https:/ meandererworld.wordpress.com where there are more than 1,700 poems we are told.
But we are not told why he writes poetry - is it for private pleasure or to make a point to the public or just steam out his emotions and conjure up images in his fantasy and imagination. To find out which is which we have to fathom out by ourselves, a tremendous task, indeed. Nevertheless, we shall try to find out what he is saying in his poems. He has written very short poems, as well as fairly lengthy poems.
Let’s take a short poem to see what his line of thought is - Flora.
Garden of roots
And sky line of fruits
In between rests
One of many towers of Babel
Latinized by Linnaeus.
I like it for its brevity but unless we understand the classical allusions, most of us will miss the wit and significance of his statement.
Let’s take A Sri Lankan Arm-chair Critic for his views. Here is the poem in full:
We comment on the political front,
Or how the Sri Lankan cricket team
Could have used a third spinner.
-After all, we are the wiles of spin
And the yarns of spin doctors-
As we weave everything on
What the color box, boxes out,
Like the perfect design of peace,
Or a flawless blueprint
Of environmental conservation,
Yet we don’t walk out, to vote in an election
Or to a peace rally, nor do we throw scraps of paper
To a lonely garbage bin.
We talk the talk but rarely walk the walk,
When our obese buttocks
Are perennially stuck to the coward’s plank,
Perfecting the art of lip-diarrhea.
We are only potty-trained
To be arm chair critics.
Here the poet makes an observation and uses a pluralized self-criticism of some of us which is welcome to point out a common weakness in our society.
Let’s look at another poem titled
There is no Audience for poetry
There was a lecture on why
We don’t have bread queues anymore
Seemingly bread is too trivial, too insipid
For the common man,
And I still shuffle and conjure words
For some much-needed green dough.
And the poet toying with words,
And applying for tenure,
As a lecturer, is given a redundancy check.
And old that the job description,
Wants a mime artist – a pantomime actor.
Seemingly words are obsolete,
Like a kite-less sky begging for colour,
And I’m that little boy
Making kites for a living.
And those kites are my bread crumbs
And all I ask is for you to hold your tongue out
Even if you’re not famished.
Sometimes poets use paradoxes knowingly for us to beg for the purpose and Metaphysical poets delight us often. Here, poet Dilantha Gunawardana uses the first stanza that confuses me. He says “Seemingly bread is too trivial, too insipid for the common man” But I thought that a lot of common people in the cities depend on bread instead of eating rice for all three meals. And the second stanza too speaks of three unconnected events. And the third stanza is a moving picture though not connected directly with the above stanzas.
I like the simile – Like a kite-less sky begging for colour. And the last stanza gives us the poetic justice:
Perhaps you will only taste stale dough,
Well past her shelf life, and expiry date.
And just maybe kites will fall from the sky,
Crashing to your reaching tongue, flakes of honey-coated manna.
Thus, we see the poet writes on a variety of subjects that catches his fancy, and note the sincerity in his expression. Some of his titles are- Mango Lights, Four Vesak Poems, Ungraceful Age, Little Jesus, Constipation, Amaradeva, The Colour Purple, Rosary, Extra Terrestrial, Karapincha Tree, A lesson in Sex-Ed, Refugee Child, and many more.
Relax and enjoy reading the poems.