Borrowed Dust- Vivimarie VanderPoorten

One of the books I read over the last couple of days, was Vivimarie VanderPoorten's "Borrowed Dust".  I had bought it a couple of months back, on account of being nominated for the Gratiaen award in 2016. Given that the printed copy I have, says it was published in 2017, it suggests that it was the manuscript which came to be nominated. Why this detail? Will return to this point.

This collection has some poems, which while maintaining the uniformity of the language across the collection, has a depth which brings a sense of awe to the reader, of the poetesses' creativity. "The Wrong Rainbow" was one of those poems which made a deep impression on me.

"I tried to fix
but the colours ran
into each other
and spilled
until you were no longer
even a wrong
rainbow
Smiling a clown's smile
At an upside down world"

The way the poetess hints of a "Tradition" that some of the men followed ( at least a few decades back), that we cannot be proud of, is subtle:

"I was seven when
I first saw my uncle
kick his pregnant wife, hard.
In the stomach.
It was Avurudu and
festive times were upon us"

"Walk away" is a poem that tells a lot more than the lines on the sheet:
"Go free
Not like one
on parole
but like one who has
served his sentence.
You have done time
loving me
never really having me.
You have endured
rigorous cycles of
pain and joy"


But the poems that left a deep etch in me, is when she wrote of love, of the insecurity it carries, the expectation of one partner, while he or she is yet unsure of his or her own commitment.
"And how long
Will you wait
For me
My love?
Will you wait
Until the river of my
Fear
Has shrunk in
The drought of Loneliness
Will you wait
Until I begin to
Rescue my
canoe-heart
From sinking" ( Untitled III )
  While the poem is heart rendering, am unsure if the Printer has done justice to the poetess. Look at the lines,
"
Until the river of my
Fear"
              - is this how the poetess meant the lines to be ? I seriously doubt it. Why ? Because it doesn't read well, and such uncomfortable lines are frequent.

 Another example of bad formatting is "Newspaper bride"
"...
And I apply pink lipstick
on her delicate mouth
and try no to think of how
much it has endured, unwarranted
drunken slobbering kisses
and worse"

   Does the lines :
"and try no to think of how
much it has endured, unwarranted"
     read well ?

Or the lines:
"I who have squandered hearts
 and got caught in the
 stampedes of loving
and letting go
 who have no trophies to

display
for the challenges I've faced
or the endless races
run...." ( Game)

     To me they don't. And am afraid as a poetess, this formatting of her poems have to be of so much importance to her.  And I guess the poetess has to bear some responsibility of the ill formatted poems, found in her collection publicaion. Surely, she saw this particular print, before it went public ?

In essence it is a collection that I enjoyed quite a lot. She uses word play appreciably. And the poems are considerably Sri Lankan, with no references to what the local terms mean to help out an outsider.  Consider this:
"The gok kola is green and alive
oddly vibrant
In thte rain
A cursory glance at
Upatha and Vipatha
Tell me he is my age." ( Love, Rain and Death)
    I have a confession to make. I prefer reading Sinhala poetry to English, because the context needs to be dug out deep from an alien environment, when reading the latter. This is time consuming, while damaging to  the flow of the reading. For example, take the line:

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.”

  Here a reader, outside of the typical English environment, needs to do some extra homework to understand the bigger picture ( Why is April cruel ? Isn't Spring hopeful ? Need to understand the English setting as well as the poet's idiosyncrasies.)  In that context, Vivimarie's poems are very Sri Lankan - so much so that a foreigner will not comprehend without certain help from a Sri Lankan. I look forward to reading her other collections.