The Implication of Indigenous Folk Memory in Lakdas Wikkrama Sinha’s Poetry

Abstract

The present article examines the place of and search for a pre-colonial poetics embedded in indigenous folk memory in the writing of Lakdas Wikkrama Sinha, a leading postcolonial Sri Lankan poet. The discussion departs from the general assessment of Wikkrama Sinha as being an “anti-colonial” voice, and examines the larger creative vision the writer espoused by re-living a lost Sinhala sensibility and way of life by evoking dramatizations, memory, and rupture that transcend his post-colonial present. In doing so, the present discussion attempts to complicate Wikkrama Sinha’s poetic world as demonstrating energy to break away from his contemporaries whose poetics relied on an English sensibility. In anchoring the conversation, the article draws on selected poems from Wikkrama Sinha’s debut collection, Lustre. Poems – in particular, “Hearts of Granite” and “Memorial” – and later work such as “In Ancient Kotmale” and “Don’t Talk to Me About Matisse”. The paper drives that the place of indigenous folk memory is crucial for the grounding of Wikkrama Sinha’s creative programme and for an in depth reading of his exercise as a writer.

Keywords

• sri lankan writing
• postcolonial literature
• folk memory