Lost Evenings, Lost Lives: Tamil Poets from Sri Lanka’s War

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In May 2009, the Sri Lankan government officially announced the end of a civil war that had been ravaging the island for almost three decades. During all these years, Tamil poets have commented on the war and its vicissitudes in what constitutes an extraordinary body of poetry. We find poems on violence and trauma, loss and exile, as well as courage and hope. Together these poems can be read as an alternative history of the war. This collection of up to 50 poems translated from the original Tamil, comes with an afterword that will provide readers with the historical and political context of Sri Lanka’s war, while also mapping literary developments during that period. Among the poets included are internationally acclaimed poets, such as Cheran, V. I. S. Jeyapalan, M. A. Nuhman, and S. Sivasegaram, less well-known voices, such as Balasooriyan, S. Vilvaratnam, or Solaikili, as well as a significant number of women poets, such as Sivaramani, Urvasi, Avvai, and others. Both Lakshmi Holmstrom and Sascha Ebeling have previously published translations of these poets, which we plan to include in addition to a number of new translations made specifically for this volume.