Wikkramasinha, Lakdhas: Lakdhas Wikkramasinha

NYRB Poets, paperback Editors: Aparna Halpé and Michael Ondaatje Translated by Udaya Prashantha Meddegma Publication Date: July 25, 2023 Publisher Marketing: Bold and original poetry from a leading figure of an underrepresented anglophone tradition. Lakdhas Wikkramasinha is one of the major Sri Lankan poets of the twentieth century. Fearlessly political, "powerful and angry" (as Michael Ondaatje calls him in his memoir Running in the Family), Wikkramasinha has influenced generations of writers in Sri Lanka. Yet his work, originally self-published in limited editions, has long been inaccessible. This new volume, edited by Aparna Halpé and Ondaatje, is the first to offer a comprehensive selection of Wikkramasinha's English poetry drawn from the original sources, most of which have never been reprinted. It is also the first to contain a representative selection of the poetry that Wikkramasinha composed in Sinhala, now translated into English by Udaya Meddegama. An accomplished bilingual w