When wide-ranging imagination pours out in poetry

Palitha Ranatunga is at the forefront of a new generation of bold Sri Lankan poets exploring a vast array of themes ranging from personal histories, nature of the world we live in, natural beauty, complexity of love and injustice. His fourth collection of poem titled ‘Paulownia Dear, We May Not be So Lucky’ is testimony to his wide-ranging imagination and skill at turning experience and observation into poetry. Some of the titles of this book – Metaxis, My Pendulum’, ‘My friend, a Scarecrow and Me,’ ‘Venus de Milo,’ ‘Colour of the Morgue,’ ‘A Writer’s Block,’ ’22C’s Best Dating Site’ -- are ample proof of that.

In 2013, Palitha Ranatunga won the ‘Emerging Writer of the Year’ award at the Godage National Awards Ceremony. He says a few poems in this collection were written as metamodernist poetry that has surpassed the era of postmodernism, living amidst fear of nuclear holocaust and environmental disasters.