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.