Silent and Loud  (Paperback, Voce)

Silent and Loud is the voice of the voiceless trapped in their own cocoons, the spaces of others or nameless abysses where the Other’s rules prevail. As the voce or the voice of them, what I try to do in this collection of poems is penetrate their private spaces and the corners of their psyches to discursively present buried emotions and experiences. At one level, this collection is deeply personal. Most of the poems in it express emotions and experiences that I could say are mine, at least, secondarily. At another level, they are universal as the emotions and experiences captured in them are shared by many Sri Lankans and the people the world over. In converting such emotions and experiences into words, I mainly relied on modern poetic forms such as verse libre and 6 imagism. Some poems are uniquely Sri Lankan as they borrow from indigenous languages and literary forms. In terms of themes, this collection explores postcolonial, economic, political, religious, gender, and sexual realities that have a bearing on Sri Lankan people and shape their personal and social identities. To engage with and depict such themes, I used symbolism, allegory, and personification: techniques that enable the poet to stack several layers of meaning on the signs in a poem and give life to lifeless objects and concepts, making them agential. What this does in a work of art is shed light on the way dominant ideologies of a society shape individual choices and determine their fate.