Grun-tu-molani

Vidyan Ravinthiran's much-anticipated first collection contains many poems about Sri Lanka which fuse politics, personal history and myth, yet his voice pitches itself not so much halfway between East and West as between emotional forthrightness and linguistic exuberance. Traditional forms - of culture, of verse - contend with brusquer impulses in an era of technological distortion; without taking himself too seriously, the poet asks if perhaps we don't take ourselves seriously enough. Thes...