Project Plume Poetry Spotlight – Chamini Kulathunga

First published in Project Plume, August 2020

For our WIT Month 2020 poetry spotlight, we’re proud to present three poems by Thilini N. Liyanaarachchi, as translated from the Sinhalese by Chamini Kulathunga. The poem “To be a Queen is a Sin” questions how history books portray the only female ruler in ancient Sri Lankan history, Queen Anula of Anuradhapura, as being promiscuous while murdering several of her husbands. “Shall We Ask Time to Stop?” explores a daughter’s feelings toward her aging mother. “Inebriated Love,” on the other hand, represents a woman’s admiration for her beloved using metaphors of substance intoxication, a culturally restricted domain for South Asian women.
Read the translations on Project Plume

Video art by Jin Kim

Why Sri Lankan Literature Matters?

“Even within South Asia, Sri Lanka occupies a minority state in terms of both its geography and population. From a translator’s perspective, I couldn’t help but notice that the rate of Sri Lankan contemporary literature that is being circulated (in translation or in the original language/s) and read around the world is comparably lower than the national literatures of many other countries. It is also studied and anthologized much less often than other national literatures of the world. We talk about the infamous “3% factor” of annual literary translation publications in the US, but we’ve hardly ever seen or heard about a translation from the Sinhalese making it to the languages that contribute to that percentage, right”

-Interview with Project Plume