Avidya

<p><strong>The poems in this collection emerged from journeys of great personal significance and out of a migrant sensibility tied to three different countries: Sri Lanka the UK and the USA.</strong> Sensuous droll yearning they consider otherwise forgotten (ignored repressed erased) events. </p><br><p>In 2017 Vidyan Ravinthiran travelled to the north of Sri Lanka where his parents grew up - it finally felt safe - visiting war-torn Tamil areas overwritten by a tourist focus on the sun-spoiled South. In 2020 he his wife and their one-year-old moved from Britain to the United States months before the pandemic hit and the travel ban separated them for almost two years from family overseas. </p><br><p><em>Avidya</em> is a political and a spiritual collection whose multiple poetic forms open and closed are shaped by myth and philosophy and by Sri Lankan as well as global crises. It is also a book about the forms of both strength and fear that parents pass on to their children.</p><p><b><i>Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2025</i></b></p>