“Songs in a Time Confinement” by Rashmy
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.
Songs in a Time Confinement
Rashmy, Nedra Rodrigo (trans.)
Trace Press (July 2026)
