etc - Navayana

A Second Sunrise
Poems by Cheran
Edited and translated from Tamil by
Lakshmi Holmström and Sascha Ebeling
34
The sea swallowed the sun
splitting open, spraying
crimson blood
over the clouds.
A Second Sunrise showcases the best
poems of Cheran, an accomplished poet
of our times. The Sri Lankan civil war
looms over much of his work. Poems of the
precariousness of love are interwoven with
poems of war. The idyllic seascape of 1977
when
Waves lap along the shore
spreading
within me
the sea
is ruined forever by the experience of war
(1981–89). These are followed by poems
of exile and the experience of the diaspora
(1993–2003).
Now there is left
only a great land
wounded.
No bird may fly over it
until our return.
Finally, 2004 onwards, there are poems
that take us to the devastation of May
2009, by when
The sea has drained away
Tamil has no territory
Kinships have no name.
With such a wide range, translators
Lakshmi Holmström and Sascha Ebeling
treat each poem both as fresh in its
particularity and as part of the poet’s
oeuvre. Their English renditions capture
the resonances and rhythms that connect
Cheran to a long Tamil poetic tradition that
spans over two thousand years.
Cheran is a major Tamil poet. Lakshmi
Holmström is an award-winning translator
of Tamil fiction and poetry. Sascha Ebeling
is an assistant professor of Tamil at the
University of Chicago.
‘The poems are like
mini-bombs set to
blow a hole through
your heart. They
bear witness to the
tragedy of the Sri
Lankan civil war’
The Hindu
‘Cheran’s poetry... is deeply human, direct
and moving without being sentimental;
political without being loud. The translators
have been able to capture the mood and
the tone and help us imagine the idiom of
the original’—Indian Express
2012
Hardback ISBN 9788189059491 Rs 295
Paperback ISBN 9788189059507 Rs 195
160 pages 8 x 5.25”
All rights available