TO PREVENT AN EXILE: CONSERVING LAKDAS WIKKRAMASINHA

In my early-20s, two poets I had to read as a university student went on to leave a lasting impression: one was T.S. Elliot and the other – Lakdas Wikkramasinha (1941-1978). The work of both poets was taught to us by Nihal Fernando, which is another experience. Though I have so far failed to locate the exact source, I have read somewhere that Fernando considered Lakdas Wikkramasinha to be the “finest poet” (composing in English) the country has produced. While, on one hand, it is sad that a country’s leading poet in a particular language is one who has been dead for 42 years (in which time, one supposes, that language was alive and was further advanced), it is also probable that Wikkramasinha’s title-contender has certainly not yet arrived. From among the poets who are living and publishing regularly, the two leading names are those of Vivimarie Vanderpoorten and Malinda Seneviratne (there are others, but they haven’t published quite as much): who, in the temple of Lakdas, are two handmaidens.

Unfortunately, within the next ten years (probably less), the poetry of Lakdas Wikkramasinha is set to disappear from school and the university. Removed from the main course and shrunk to a footnote in an introduction lecture, Sri Lanka’s finest English language poet will be limited to a harmless poem or two like “Don’t Talk to Me about Matisse” or “The Cobra”. The First classes of my generation will consider this eviction an academic necessity and a triumph. As 2030 dawns, a suitable Colombo poet will take the seat thus made vacant.

There are two aspects that encourage the impending sentence on the whole. Primarily, Lakdas Wikkramasinha annoys a certain gendered English classroom sensibility; and that classroom, as we have experienced, is heavily gendered. Since that word is liberally used, Wikkramasinha is sometimes (mistakenly) branded as misogynistic. And, like for Earnest Hemingway, men likewise branded are increasingly being cast out of syllabus matter. However, fixated on themes and take home morals,the classroom also often walks over Wikkramasinha’s creative mind and the originality of his craft at play. He is an improviser. His writing is an experiment with idiom, imagery, and politics: all at the same time. Wikkramasinha is a miser who saves his words for rare exuberant moods. He is heavily preoccupied with form. Of the published poets of my generation, Madri Kalugala – author of

“An Almond Moon” and the White Owl” (2015) – is the only writer who comes to mind as being fussy in that same way with the poetics of form.

Secondly, there is an issue in publication: the unavailability of Wikkramasinha’s poetry, which supports grandiose misconceptions and misreadings. Students and general readers alike make up their minds about Wikkramasinha by reading in total four or five poems. His Sinhala poetry in “Janakiharanaya Saha Venath Kavi” included, Wikkramasinha produced five collections between 1965 and 1978. Being largely privately published (self-published) in the 1960s and 1970s, the poetry is rarely available anymore in full volume. In universities, lecturers photocopy from a photocopy and pass down the relevant selection. In a battered condition, I have come across a copy of “Lustre Poems”,wikkramasinha’s 1965 debut – a copy he himself has donated to the university –at Peradeniya’s library. But, his subsequent editions have only come to me as photocopies. It is a crime that Lakdas Wikkramasinha doesn’t have a collected edition. When I suggested this idea to a publisher in 2008, I was told that such poetry has no market and made a loss than a profit. What can one say to such innocence?

It is unfortunate that Wikkramasinha didn’t have the friend Richard de Zoysa had in Rajivawijesinha. Through the Sabaragamuwa University Press, Wijesinha collected de Zoysa’s poetry into a single edition after de Zoysa was killed in February 1990. Of course, Wikkramasinha’s poems are periodically published in (badly formatted) anthologies which misspell, among others, Wikkramasinha’s own name; the contents of which miraculously coincide with the reading lists from the A/L to the External Degree. These dubious black market editions have taken the place of what should be professional publications. Lakdas Wikkramasinha, in many ways, is like Pradeep Mathew in Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel, “Chinaman”. Supposedly, he is Sri Lanka’s finest poet, but without a single Google image to his name, and with his poetry scattered in piecemeal. At the brink of exile, the message Wikkramasinha shares with us is to preserve and to regulate: an activity in which both the academy and the publisher has an equal role. Even if some tempers are to be lost reading poems like “The Death of Ashanti”, “The Headman’s Son”, and “To a Servant Girl”, the poetry should be contained for adolescents to return to as older and better informed readers.

He was the “finest poet” (composing in English) the country has produced

Within the next 10 years (probably less), his poetry set to disappear from school and universities

His writing is an experiment with idiom, imagery and politics; all at the same time