Handwriting

by Michael Ondaatje

"Tumultuous, vibrant, tragic and over too soon." -- Newsday

Handwriting is Michael Ondaatje's first new book of poetry since The Cinnamon Peeler . The exquisite poems collected here draw on history, mythology, landscape, and personal memories to weave a rich tapestry of images that reveal the longing for--and expose the anguish over--lost loves, homes, and language, as the poet contemplates scents and gestures and evokes a time when "handwriting occurred on waves, / on leaves, the scripts of smoke" and remembers a woman's "laughter with its / intake of breath. Uhh huh."

Crafted with lyrical delicacy and seductive power, Handwriting reminds us of Michael Ondaatje's stature as one of the finest poets writing today.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Fiction, Canadian Literature, Asia, Writing

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, and essayist, renowned for his contributions to both poetry and prose. He was born in Colombo in 1943, to a family of Tamil and Burgher descent. Ondaatje emigrated to Canada in 1962, where he pursued his education, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts from Queen's University.
Ondaatje’s literary career began in 1967 with his poetry collection The Dainty Monsters, followed by his celebrated The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1970. His poetry earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General’s Award for his collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 in 1979. He published 13 books of poetry, exploring diverse themes and poetic forms.
In 1992, Ondaatje gained international fame with the publication of his novel The English Patient, which won the Booker Prize and was later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. His other notable works include In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Anil’s Ghost (2000), and Divisadero (2007), which won the Governor General’s Award. Ondaatje’s novel Warlight (2018) was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Aside from his writing, Ondaatje has been influential in fostering Canadian literature. He served as an editor at Coach House Books, contributing to the promotion of new Canadian voices. He also co-edited Brick, A Literary Journal, and worked as a founding trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.
Ondaatje’s work spans various forms, including plays, documentaries, and essays. His 2002 book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film earned him critical acclaim and won several awards. His plays have been adapted from his novels, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter.
Over his career, Ondaatje has been honored with several prestigious awards. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, upgraded to Companion in 2016, and received the Sri Lanka Ratna in 2005. In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, was named in his honor.
Ondaatje’s personal life is also intertwined with his literary pursuits. He has been married to novelist Linda Spalding, and the couple co-edits Brick. He has two children from his first marriage and is the brother of philanthropist Sir Christopher Ondaatje. He was also involved in a public stand against the PEN American Center's decision to honor Charlie Hebdo in 2015, citing concerns about the publication's anti-Islamic content.
Ondaatje’s enduring influence on literature and his ability to blend personal history with universal themes in his writing continue to shape Canadian and world literature.

Reviews

[Atri · Rating 3 out of 5]

In certain languages the
calligraphy celebrates
where you met the plum
blossom and moon by chance

- the dusk light, the cloud pattern,
recorded always in your heart
...
A condensary of time in the mountains
- your rain-swollen gate, a summer
scarce with human meeting.
Just bells from another village.

[Victoria Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've shared my admiration of this man before, but that won't stop me from saying again and again how absolutely exquisite I think he is. What strikes me about Handwriting is that it is so very personal and what impresses me is that it is even vulnerably so. It's as if he bled on the page for a while. For me, a great deal of bad contemporary poetry lacks that quality. Instead, I find most contemporary poetry is cowardly, the poet or narrator looks out rather than within, and if he or she does attempt to look within, then the language is either empty of soul, bloodless and impersonal, or it's overflowing drivel frothing with obtuse emotion and trite description. So it has been so refreshing for me to read Ondaatje's poems at a time when I was becoming kinda just a tad disillusioned with poetry.

Handwriting is Ondaatje's revisiting of his homeland, Sri Lanka. In these poems he mixes the everyday with myth, the present with past, the real with art, he juxtaposes his childhood memories against his more discerning, more present or perhaps more distant adult eye. I think this is something that he himself is unsure of and testing--what is more true? what he believes today that he saw or experienced then, or what others' tales have told, or what he sees with his own eyes now? And I'm not sure but maybe there is no definitive answer, only that there is truth in all of it. And it is the impressions, the language, the effect not the fact that matters most in the end: "Handwriting occured on waves,/ on leaves, the scripts of smoke"("The Distance of a Shout").

Needless to say, this little volume is a treasure that I will keep and revisit many times.

[Anima · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Distance of a Shout
“(...)

There was no book of the forest,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died.

Handwriting occurred on waves,
on leaves, the scripts of smoke,
a sign on a bridge along the Mahaweli River.

A gradual acceptance of this new language.”
Nine sentiments
“ (...)
I hold you the way astronomers
draw constellations for each other
in the markets of wisdom

placing shells
on a dark blanket
saying "these
are the heavens"

calculating the movement
of the great stars“

[Dash · Rating 5 out of 5]

How glorious is the feeling of reading poetry about your own people? How magical is it, to find the everyday life you see, the life you lived and the ancient stories that your pious aunts and superstitious much older cousin raised you on, being taken to prose, given metre and romanticised like a sheer blue sapphire?

It's probably not a big deal for people who have a lot of poetry written about their country that is accessible to them, but it's like a gold mine for me, a Sri Lankan who can't read my mother tongues.

I first read Michael Ondaatje in his kind of autobiography Running in the Family and was delighted to find that he a 77-year-old man had grown up with a family of similar, larger-than-life, characters from a stop-motion cartoon as I, 45 years his junior.

The poetry in this, his first collection, is perhaps less glamorous compared to his later collection The Cinnamon Peeler. Maybe he wasn't as famous back when this came out. Maybe he wasn't caught up to purpling his prose yet. And as such, I find this collection very dear to my heart, hence the essay.

Here are some of my favourite lines:

"I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13th century of our love."

"Where is the forest
not cut down
for profit or literature"

"the way someone you know
might lean forward
and mark the place
where your soul is."

"Once we buried our libraries
under the great medicinal trees
which the invaders burned
- when we lost the books,
the poems of science, invocations."

[Vina Barrera☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 ☆. A lot of memorable moments. Will be reading my favorites again.

[Calypso · Rating 4 out of 5]

(more like 4.5 stars)
Poems that read like stories of long lost civilisations hidden in the jungle.
I didn't like all the poems in the collection, but the ones I did, I LOVED. First book I read by Ondaatje and it won't be the last.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Ondaatje proves himself as my favourite author time and time again. His writing is so real you can taste it on your tongue! Especially if you’ve ever been to Sri Lanka/are Sri Lankan - all six senses experience this. And I don’t even think I’m that well versed in poetry at all - I know so little about it in a critical sense, but this did everything I’d expect good poetry to do.

“There was no book of the forest,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died.

Handwriting occurred on waves,
on leaves, the scripts of smoke
a sign on a bridge along the Mahaweli River.

A gradual acceptance of this new language.”
- From “The Distance of a Shout”

[Efemia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 rating

The title says it all. These poems are as personal as someone’s handwriting. Culturally and emotionally at times inscrutable to the reader, but that’s what I love about it. Lyrical, really incredible words and rhythm, in tight little patterns, that read so well in your questioning voice on a quiet night in a bubblebath, which I did :)

You cannot really project too much on to what Ondaatje hides alluringly from you, I think - so you are left just to behold the poetry's patent beauty and value. Then there are clear glimpses of deep truth that seize you. Ondaatje gives but keeps himself and his history safe. Handwriting is a beautiful way to travel Sri Lanka, the cryptic history of ancient monks and South East Asia. Whole books could spring out of these poems of love, lives and traditions.

Poems live forever for me and a books of poems is a reference. A guide to living; rough suggestions of understanding. They are never finished. I mean you would never say you finished the dictionary. So I can't wait to dip back into this again and again.

Certainly recommend. It lost a half star because I wanted moar!

[Kasandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, lyrical meditations and musings on war, lost civilizations and ways of life, and the erotic/romantic, as well as poems about the poet's personal past history. All intermingle in a spiritual, graceful, balanced way that propels the reader forward but leaves enough mystery for repeated readings. This made me want to learn more about Sri Lanka's history, and I found the writing to be almost painterly in its imagery, deft and subtle without ever veering into cliche or being heavy-handed, and with the subjects of both war and love, I think that's immensely difficult. Very impressive and well worth having in your collection.

[Nick Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and strange collection. I found some of these poems stunning, while others were completely beyond me.

Will be stamping this segment of a poem on my tombstone:

I hold you the way astronomers
draw constellations for each other
in the markets of wisdom

placing shells
on a dark blanket
saying “these
are the heavens”

calculating the movement
of the great stars

[trinitykduff · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few books I kept from my grandpa, I understand why he had this on his nightstand.

[Eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way someone you know
might lean forward
and mark the place
where your soul is
-always, they say,
near to a wound

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I have to be in the right mood for a book of poetry to speak to Me. Or maybe his other book of poems, The Cinnamon Peeler, was just much better than this one. I think I only "felt" or liked 3 passages in the entire book:

The women of Boralesgamuwa
uproot lotus in mid-river
skin reddened by floating pollen

Songs to celebrate the washing
of arms and bangles

The laughter when husbands are away

An uncaught prawn hiding by their feet

The three folds on their stomachs
considered a sign of beauty

They try out all their ankle bracelets
during these afternoons

and

For the first forty days a child
is given dreams of previous lives.
Journeys, winding paths,
a hundred small lessons
and then the past is erased

and

I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13th century
of our love

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read "The English Patient" back in high school, I remember thinking that Ondaatje's writing was much more lyrical than most novelists', and the intensely beautiful language of these poems confirms that view. He has such a light touch, and this ideally complements his intimate subject matter. The fact that most of the poems are set in his native Sri Lanka makes them even more intriguing and adds to the airy feel of the words. While I enjoyed many of the pieces in this volume, by far my favorite is "The Story." It weaves an ancient legend in with the writer's current life and examines the role of memory in making sense of what we know.

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

For his first forty days a child
is given dreams of previous lives.
Journeys, winding paths,
a hundred small lessons
and then the past is erased.

Some are born screaming,
some full of introspective wandering
into the past - that bus ride in winter,
the sudden arrival within
a new city in the dark.
And those departures from family bonds
leaving what was lost and needed.
So the child's face is a lake
of fast moving clouds and emotions.

A last chance for the clear history of the self.
All our mothers and grandparents here,
our dismantled childhoods
in the buildings of the past.

Some great forty-day daydream
before we bury the maps.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ondaatje is a brilliant technician. I just didn't feel much of an emotional connection to most of the poems ("The Great Tree" and "The Story" excepted).

Poetry is like that. It's so personal that, though one can identify the technical aspects that succeed or don't, it's awfully hard to predict what will have that deep emotional resonance.

Or at least, that's how I feel today.

[Brooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection was just okay for me. There were a few shining moments, but I think most of it went over my head. My favourite poem is below:

The First Rule of
Sinhalese Architecture

Never build three doors
in a straight line

A devil might rush
through them
deep into your house,
into your life

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely reminder for the need to keep in touch with our own human capabilities and sensuality in the wake of technology. I loved The English Patient and didn't know Ondaatje also wrote poetry. He's wonderful with both genres.

[Griflet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death at Kataragama

For half the day blackouts stroke this house into stillness so there is no longer a whirring fan or the hum of light. You hear sounds of a pencil being felt for in a drawer in the dark and then see its thick shadow in candlelight, writing the remaining words. Paragraphs reduced to one word. A punctuation mark. Then another word, complete as a thought. The way someone’s name holds terraces of character, contains all of our adventures together. I walk the corridors which might perhaps, I’m not sure, be cooler than the rest of the house. Heat at noon. Heat in the darkness of night.

There is a woodpecker I am enamoured of I saw this morning through my binoculars. A red thatch roof to his head more modest than crimson, deeper than blood. Distance is always clearer. I no longer see words in focus. As if my soul is a blunt tooth. I bend too close to the page to get nearer to what is being understood. What I write will drift away. I will be able to understand the world only at arm’s length.

Can my soul step into the body of that woodpecker? He may be too hot in sunlight, it could be a limited life. But if this had been offered to me today, at 9 a.m., I would have gone with him, traded this body for his.

A constant fall of leaf around me in this time of no rain like the continual habit of death. Someone soon will say of me, “his body was lying in Kataragama like a pauper.” Vanity even when we are a corpse. For a blue hand that contains no touch or desire in it for another. There is something else. Not just the woodpecker. Ten water buffalo when I stopped the car. They were being veered from side to side under the sun. The sloshing of their hooves in the paddy field that I heard thirty yards away, my car door open for the breeze, the haunting sound I was caught within as if creatures of magnificence were undressing and removing their wings. My head and almost held breath out there for an hour so that later I felt as if I contained that full noon light.

It was water in an earlier life I could not take into my mouth when I was dying. I was soothed then the way a plant would be, brushed with a wet cloth, as I reduced all thought into requests. Take care of this flower. Less light. Curtain. As I lay there prone during the long vigil of my friends. The ache of ribs from too much sleep or fever—bones that protect the heart and breath in battle, during love beside another. Saliva, breath, fluids, the soul. The place bodies meet is the place of escape.

But this time brutal aloneness. The straight stern legs of the woodpecker braced against the jak fruit as he delves for a meal. Will he feel the change in his nature as my soul enters? Will it go darker? Or will I enter as I always do another’s nest, in their clothes and with their rules for a particular life.

Or I could leap into knee-deep mud potent with rice. Ten water buffalo. A quick decision. Not goals considered all our lives but, in the final minutes, sudden choice. This morning it was a woodpecker. A year ago the face of someone on a train. We depart into worlds that have nothing to do with those we love. This woman whose arm I would hold and comfort, that book I wanted to make and shape tight as a stone—I would give everything away for this sound of mud and water, hooves, great wings.

Last Ink

In certain countries aromas pierce the heart and one dies
half waking in the night as an owl and a murderer's cart go by

the way someone in your life will talk out love and grief
then leave your company laughing.

In certain languages the calligraphy celebrates
where you met the plum blossom and moon by chance

—the dusk light, the cloud pattern,
recorded always in your heart

and the rest of the world—chaos,
circling your winter boat.

Night of the Plum and Moon.

Years later you shared it
on a scroll or nudged
the ink onto stone
to hold the vista of a life.

A condensary of time in the mountains
—your rain-swollen gate, a summer
scarce with human meeting.
Just bells from another village.

The memory of a woman walking down stairs.

Life on an ancient leaf
or a crowded 5th-century seal

this mirror-world of art
—lying on it as if a bed.

When you first saw her,
the night of moon and plum,
you could speak of this to no one.
You cut your desire
against a river stone.
You caught yourself
in a cicada-wing rubbing,
lightly inked.
The indelible darker self.

A seal, the Masters said,
must contain bowing and leaping,
"and that which hides in waters."

Yellow, drunk with ink,
the scroll unrolls to the west
a river journey, each story
an owl in the dark, its child-howl

unreachable now
—that father and daughter,
that lover walking naked down blue stairs
each step jarring the humming from her mouth.

I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13 th century
of our love

before the yellow age of paper

before her story became a song,
lost in imprecise reproductions

until caught in jade,

whose spectrum could hold the black greens
the chalk-blue of her eyes in daylight.


Our altering love, our moonless faith.

Last ink in the pen.

My body on this hard bed.

The moment in the heart
where I roam restless, searching
for the thin border of the fence
to break through or leap.

Leaping and bowing.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this collection and each time I reread it, I feel like I am reading it for the first time ever. I sit and savor each word, like I would sit and savor each sip of a cup of strong black tea.

[Tim Nason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars - In "Handwriting," Michael Ondaatje strives to fully inhabit his native Sri Lanka through poetry.

I gather that the poems were initiated during a trip to his country of birth from his residence in Toronto, Canada, where he has lived for many years, but the poems convey far more than quick observations. He incorporates myth, history, folk-tale, characters, sounds, sometimes his own experiences, and also, importantly, named places. To me, the latter were especially bewildering until I discovered, using Google Maps, that they are often ancient ruins, sites where I imagine Ondaatje walked or stayed.

He refers to the country's "medieval coast," to times of royalty, scholarship, youthful learning, love, theater, times of peace. To a town buried by a lake; to a village of local wisdom, of stone-cutters, soothsayers, gem diggers, noting that their "wisdom extends no more than thirty miles." To forests that were once water-gardens.

In addition to immersing himself in Sri Lanka's ancient past, the poems seek to resurrect, bring into the present, the island nation's rich and tragic history. Many of the poems tell the story of enemies, invaders, who forced the local monks who guarded and preserved their culture, to carry away Buddhist monuments ("stone and bronze gods") to safer places, sometimes to bury them. For example, a Samadhi Buddha buried in 750 AD was rediscovered only in 1968. Anecdotes about the country's artistic and literary culture are taken from many time periods, giving the sense that cultural flowering and destruction are events that recur over thousands of years.

Evidence of these recurrences takes the form of the Buddhist monuments that were unearthed, by accident, many centuries later. Or they are preserved in language or, more physically, in writing. Ondaatje fuses the creative action of his own poems with the poetry of ancient writings. But ancient poetry is multi-layered, is also calligraphy, decorative, beautiful, meaningful at multiple levels of the human mind.

In "Last Ink," Ondaatje writes, "In certain languages the calligraphy celebrates / where you met the plum blossom and the moon by chance." It continues, "Years later you shared it / on a scroll or nudged / the ink onto stone / to hold the vista of a life."

Yet another layer of Ondaatje's idea or vision of ancient culture with possible links to the natural world and the present, and possibly to himself, appears in a more obscure way (to me, that is) in "The Distance of a Shout," when he refers to "Handwriting occurred on waves, // on leaves, the scripts of smoke, / a sign on the bridge along the Mahaweli River." In "Buried 2, iii," The poets wrote their stories on rock and leaf / to celebrate the work of the day, / the shadow pleasures of night." In "The Great Tree," "Language attacks the paper from the air / There is only a path of blossoms." In "House on a Red Cliff," "the sea is in the leaves / the waves are in the palms / old languages in the arms / of the casuarina pine ...." And from "Last Ink," again, "You cut your desire / against a river stone. / You caught yourself / in a cicada-wing rubbing, / lightly inked. / The indelible darker self."

If these excerpts seem like riddles, I think it is because Ondaatje is trying to convey the shifting and multi-layered qualities of culture, history, creativity, emotions and the self. Perhaps he indicates here a struggle with the limitations of writing in the face of such complexity.

This slender book contains so many unexpected riches.

[Chris Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Distance Of a Shout

"We lived on the medieval coast
south of warrior kingdoms
during the ancient age of the winds
as they drove all things before them.

Monks from the north came
down our streams floating—that was
the year no one ate river fish.

There was no book of the forest,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died.

Handwriting occurred on waves,
on leaves, the scripts of smoke,
a sign on a bridge along the Mahaweli River.

A gradual acceptance of this new language."


except from Death At Kataragama

"There is a woodpecker I am enamoured of I saw this morning through my binoculars. A red thatch roof to his head more modest than crimson, deeper than blood. Distance is always clearer. I no longer see words in focus. As if my soul is a blunt tooth. I bend too close to the page to get nearer to what is being understood. What I write will drift away. I will be able to understand the world only at arm’s length.

Can my soul step into the body of that woodpecker? He may be too hot in sunlight, it could be a limited life. But if this had been offered to me today, at 9 a.m., I would have gone with him, traded this body for his."

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit cloying at times but when this collection works, it sings at a pitch that is nothing short of visionary -- as Graham Swift notes in a blurb for this. The opening poem is extraordinary, and others are just gorgeous. Ondaatje has a way of quieting down a scene so you take in every moment, and small things are deeply felt -- like the shift of the wind, or the settling of the mind into sleep. There are some gorgeous erotic poems in here too; not about the act of sex directly but about desire and the fragments that remain with us. When the poems don't work, they're a bit too saccharine ("Bronze became bronze / around him, / colour became colour.") He's also from Sri Lanka, and the Sri Lankan imagery (native trees, many Buddha statues, traditional architecture) is at times intricate and thoughtful, and at other times a bit opaque and accidentally orientalist to a non-informed reader (when combined with his more spare style). Lovely read, maybe not the best influence to young poets unless they know what specifically to take from his craft (his sense of attention -- not his vocabulary).

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected.....more? after reading one of my favorites The English Patient.

annotations:

(from The Distance of a Shout)
There was no book of the forest,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died.

Handwriting occurred on waves,
on leaves, the scripts of smoke,

(from Buried)
To be buried in times of war,
in harsh weather, in the monsoon
of knives and stakes.

carrying the faith of a temple
during political crisis
away in their arms.
Hiding
the gestures of the Buddha.

Above ground, massacre and race.
A heart silenced.
The tongue removed.
The human body merged into burnign tire.
Mud glaring back
into a stare.

(from The Brother Thief)
Dark peace,
like a cave of water

(from The Nine Sentiments)
Love arrives and dies in all disguises
and we fear to move
because of old darknesses
or childhood danger

(from Death at Kataragama)
Distance is always clearer...I bend too close to the page to get nearer to what is being understood.

For a blue hand that contains no touch or desire in it for another.

bones that protect the heart and breath in battle, during love beside another....The place bodies meet is the place of escape.

[Tammy Schoen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok...I would actually give it 3 and a half stars, which for poetry isn't really fair. Sometimes episodic in nature, his poems give a picture, a moment. I love the approach, but I wasn't always drawn into the picture or the moment. And, I have to admit, that some just seemed a bit of 'stream of consciousness' with no real meaning attached (or none that was revealed to me.)

I don't mind obscure poetry, in fact I usually revel in it, but this poetry didn't really make me FEEL anything.

I am glad I read it, as I am always glad to read any poetry, but I probably won't return to this one.

[Syed Ali Hussain Bukhari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Handwriting (poems) by Michael Ondaatje

A poetry book that is short in size and converges the vast thoughts and ideas to a few words. By reading the verses a reader delves into different surroundings and specific events that begin to form a special sense of the situation.

The poems cover the topics like history, myth and specially love that arouse the feelings of the reader who feels himself present there and being described in the lines.

It was my first experience of reading English poetry book and I feel like the poet has not disappointed me.

[Saumya · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I wrote in my updates, it's very personal and localised. But cannot be rejected entirely. I enjoyed the first poem - A Gentleman Compares His Virtue to a Piece of Jade. The journey after had a layer over it that kept evading an emotional connect. Then the book ended with a poem called Last Ink and I was thankful I didn't give up on the book somewhere in the middle. Last Ink made the book totally worth it.

[Oisín · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Ondaatje equals Elizabeth Bowen in terms of the sensuality of their work. The central section of this book, Nine Sentiments, is truly great poetry – the manipulation of language and the narrative are genuinely exciting to read. It could have been more consistent, but there are moments of true beauty in this book. It is like walking through a petrified forest, still quivering with life.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very nice collection of poems drawing on memories of Sri Lanka. I liked these but I prefer the poetry in his prose to the poetry itself. The poems read like fragments from a larger collection. They're sensous and rich but slightly peripheral.

[Stephanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love him as a novelist. This was my first try for his poetry. I think part of the reason I didn't connect with them is because they were exclusively about Sri Lanka: the place, traditions, etc. Since I don't really have context for the topic, the poems then did not resonate.