Gratiaen Prize winner Jean Arasanayagam is not merely a fantastic poet but also a social critic and a great teacher. Everybody who is interested in English literature knows her both here and elsewhere. There is no point in making hosannas about her or her writing. Her prize-winning poetry book The Life of The Poet comprising 46 poems, short and long are found within 122 pages in the book published by Sarasvati Publishers.
I am not wrong if I suppose her writing is elitist ad would be greatly understood and appreciated by scholars and serious lovers of literature. Academic critics will have something positive in their evaluations.
In an email interview Jean Araanayagam, my dear friend, had given to Anshita Deval of the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, India, the readers can read the poet’s mind and vision and her style of expression. Please read her lengthy replies given to only five questions. They are awe- inspiring and perceptive.
We must first understand what the author wants to say in her or his work before we pass judgement on the work. This helps us why we appreciate or dislike a work and do justice to the writer. It is easy to criticize a work but difficult to create or write. So, I leave it to your judgment.
What I can do is to select at random some of her lines which I find pregnant with deeper meaning and exquisite presentation.
In the title poem she writes:
No, the true poet is never the victor, never seeks the cheers of vociferous voices or the applause surging crowds owning the voice of spontaneous utterance…The life of the poet is made up of fragments that create a mosaic patterning of words on the walls of temples, sanctuaries, cathedrals filled with the symbolic language that only the initiate can decipher, a second map that guides the searcher on the journey through passage after passage, the tortuous mazes and labyrinths of history.
Please read the rest of her stanzas to relish on the words she uses to mesmerize our thought process. It reminds me of classical poetry of the Greek dramatists through Shakespeare to Eliot, Yeats and the contemporary poets.
In another poem titled “Maps of Self-Discovery”, the poet bemoans with assurance of the present.
Recalling that past, of what use is it, those people who engendered me have vanished long, long go. The architecture of their abodes built with nostalgia to resemble the old country, have no longer significance to me, I do not wish to be incarcerated in the past… What could be the poet’s inner self wants? Look here:
My true self cloaked in magical mystical disguise walks freely on the crowded streets of the world…
I strive, journey on in that exodus to the Canaan land of milk and honey to reach my own visionary lands of the mind, the imagination… Here are more captivating phrases and lines in her poetry: Memory, buried in the incinerators of the mind.
Hope remains, everlasting, that vanquishes all evil that has escaped from Pandora’s mythic box. Wrench birth from the unyielding womb of nature, a poem awakening into light, dispelling darkness. Flowering and fruiting in the private arbours of the mind It no longer matters that the garment of my skin that clothed my flesh, grows dull and faded We are all poems we read in each other’ faces, I create and read in your faces
Jean Arasanayagam is not merely a creative poet but also a commentator on social issues. Please read her to find out the truth.
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