Photo courtesy of Island Life

 

What did this year

bring? It brought

the Palais des Nations

in Geneva to hear

my thoughts on poetry

and diplomacy

in the early months

of the now even

 

more savage war

on Ukraine. It saw

the birth of

Beltway Editions,

a press dedicated

to squeezing honey

from petals of light

inviting poets from

 

the far corners of

this variegated planet

to say poetry is word

music and this music

will play now. What

more? The darker

stuff, the anti-hope

matter, black on black…

 

Don’t go there. Turn

it around.White

on white is equal

absence, but we

have programmed

our language

to swoon before

white petals falling.

 

Yet I say on the cusp

of a reply. Black

Panther. Black

Boy. Black writer

born in Jaffna,

raised in Colombo,

poet in English,

my father.