A flimsy volume of 68 verses compiled into 77 pages go into the making of a compilation of Sinhalese poems by the 12-year old pupil, Chamatka Kavin Bandara titled as Eda Ehema Davasak subtitled in English as Unsung Verses of Summer. The collection lies on my table enabling me to read them from time to time.
The way I enjoy the poems may be a self-introspective expression. The short preface he writes to the collection in itself contains his poetic vision. Chamatka says that he has to thank quite a few beginning from his parents. But allow me to possess my own poetic creations in the way I desire to create.
Though the poet is still 12, he has already published three works. The earliest is titled as Mage Kaviya Mata Denna (2013), a collection of poems. Then comes Edandu Palama (2014). And Kumbi Rajya in 2012.
Scanning the pages of the latest collection, I found one exceptional creation. It is the 13th poem titled Hadavatha Nevathila. Herein the reader comes across a sensory experience of a little son who walks to the school in the morning with his father. In the crowd moving about the Kandy Lake, he spots a young couple. The poetic persona sees the 27-year old female searching all over the place for something that seems to have been lost. The persona is quite sensitively enraptured in a sense of inquisitive nature. An old man discloses the truth. The old man had been observing and overhearing a verbal dispute that ensued between the young couple. It culminated in throwing away of an object to the lake.
What are the words uttered by the old man who witnessed the event?
A moment ago with you
Passed this place
A young man
Who threw away [a ring?]
Saying: “I don’t want your heart!”
He refrains from using the word ‘ring’. But in a statement given as the background experience, the poet says that it is a ring which he saw while walking with his father. The poetic experience contains a supreme economy of words in the best sensitive manner.
The young poet tries to amalgamate the nature with the happenings of the human nature, in the day to day life. One good example is the poem titled as Avasara Nogath Kandulu. The lines of the poem go as follows:
The dewdrops drip one by one
In the morning without informing anyone,
Slowly and slowly
(But) tears well in the
Eyes of someone
And nobody knows.
The brevity in the poetic form and the sensitive twist in the expression are the crucial signs in the creative effort. As such, some poems resemble the briefest form running to two to three or four lines with a single thought stream. One such example is titled as De Kelevara or Two Ends.
A beginning / an end
Are both a beginning.
Some poetic visions as I see them become closer to an undertone of sarcasm. One example is the poem titled Peravadana (Foreword). The poetic persona enters a bookshop in the grand book festival. People he listens to talk about books and other commodities. Some others on the greatness of art and culture. They go on debating on the ways of composing poems and the attempt to get something written by professors. But the question remains whether they are discussing anything close to their hearts or are they discussing anything intimately?
There are poems that come closer to the three-lined Haiku. I dare not say that the young poet is inspired by Haiku, but may it be said that he may have read them perhaps in translated form. One example is the 41st poem. The two lines go as follows:
With a thousand birds flying
A thousand thoughts are waking.
Another example is the 47th poem. A single line segmented into three:
Extinguished
Again
To be kindled?
The imaginative power that lies beneath some of the simplest creations takes the reader away from the normal way of thinking. Though the poet has titled the creations, he believes that the poetic creations cannot be titled. This vision is held in the 48th poem where he questions the validity of naming a poem as it resembles a bucket of paint with various colours.
The creations are of different hues of colours and flavours. This factor is noted by the poet in the three-lined poem titled Suvanda (The Incense):
I am
In search of Wild
Flowers bloomed
The adolescent creator too is a creator belonging to various other fields such as film and theatre.
As noted by Margaret Mead, a well-known anthropologist, the creative skills of the child prodigy cannot be overlooked. It envelops the development of the child personality as well as perceiving of the cognitive factors around.
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