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Songs in a Time of Confinement

By (author): Rashmy

Translated by: Nedra Rodrigo

Where does seawater mingled with ashes stratify into rock?
How will the final cry, pleading for life, gather strength?/

Rashmy writes poetry in a Tamil unique to the East Coast of Sri Lanka, embedded in its ecologies and heavily influenced by its folklore, centuries of trade, and echoes of Qur’anic cadence. His work is both archive and testimony, making him one of the most significant contemporary poets of in the Tamil language.

In Songs in a Time of Confinement, Rashmy reveals the pandemic to be a time of recollection for survivors of other catastrophes like war and exile. Counting time through a hundred and one poems, the poet unravels memories of homeland, love, desire, war, faith, hauntings, and isolation – recalling youthful passions and separations, confinement during wartime, and the uncertainties of sudden and uncontrollable change.

Displaced by war and haunted by the landscape he treasures, the poet insists on the work of memory to resist the erasures of violence and time.

Presented here in Nedra Rodrigo’s elegant and perceptive translation, this bilingual Tamil/English edition includes Rashmy’s original artwork, offering a vital contribution to archives of Tamil Ilankai war-related poetry and the literature of exile and displacement.

AUTHOR

Nedra Rodrigo

Nedra Rodrigo was born in Sri Lanka and came to Canada during the civil war. She is a translator, poet, workshop organizer at the York Centre for Asian Research, and arts educator for youth in the York Region District School Board. She is also the founder of the Tamil Studies Symposium at York University. She is the founder and current host of the bilingual, inclusive literary event, the Tam Fam Lit Jam. Nedra’s poetry and essays have been published in various anthologies. Her translation credits include the poetry of R Cheran, Puthuvai Ratnathurai, and V I S Jayapalan in the collection Human Rights and the Arts in Global Asia; the memoir In the Shadow of a Sword, published by SAGE YODA Press, India (2020); Kuna Kaviyazhakan’s “Forest That Took Poison,” shortlisted for the inaugural Global Humanities Translation Prize; and the Prison of Dreams quintet. She lives in Toronto.

AUTHOR

Rashmy

Mohamed Rashmy Ahamed is a journalist, poet, writer and artist. He was born in Akkaraipattu on the east coast of Sri Lanka. In the mid-2000s, he moved into exile in the UK. He has published four acclaimed collections of poetry in Tamil


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Details

Dimensions:

240 Pages
8.5in * 5.5in * 0.4in
0.3lb

Published:

October 20, 2026

Publisher:

Trace Press

ISBN:

9781069370426

Book Subjects:

POETRY / General

Language:

eng

Other Titles by Rashmy

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