Tamil Terrains, edited by Nedra Rodrigo and Geetha Sukumaran, is a tender and evocative collection of Tamil poetry and translations. Inextricably tied to land and landscape, Rodrigo and Sukumaran teach us how rooted in place Tamil poetry is, and what an immense act of resilience it then is for a displaced and diasporic people to write these poems. Emerging from a workshop series, the editors write that Tamil Terrains is the result of a “beautiful, experimental, and nurturing space” where writers’ “claims on the language co-existed with […] and enriched each other.” The multiplicity of understandings of Tamil deepens the work as a guiding compass for the collection. We see this even in the epigraph, a line from a classic poem of Sangam literature, originally written by Cempulappeyanirar and translated into English by A. K. Ramanujan: “ […] our hearts are as red / earth and pouring rain / mingled / beyond parting.” In the Introduction, Rodrigo writes, “[…] through the art of translation, our languages and sensibilities become interconnected and our imaginations mingle beyond parting,” referencing the enduring meaning of Cempulappeyanirar’s original words.
Historically and presently, the use of the Tamil language itself varies between translators. Tkaronto-based poet Abi Jeyaratnam recites her poems in Tamil despite having lost access to the script, like so many living in the diaspora. The editors of this edition have chosen to transliterate her poems into the Roman script by using careful and intentional capital letters within a word, single or multiple vowels, as well as other distinctive and creative uses to best dictate Tamil. I shocked myself by how quickly I was able to read and understand this style of transliteration. The editors invite us to consider: “[w]hy must we express anticolonial thought and feeling in the language of the colonizer even in the face of these losses?”
Reading multiple translations of a single poem in succession was an enriching application of this theme that the editors bring forth. In the multiple translations of the original poem by Rashmy, even the translated titles given to the same poem differ with rich diversity: the titles reading as “The Song of the Indoor Season,” “Song of the Roosting Time,” and “Song in Confinement.” This depth is even further explored in a singular line. V. Iswarya translates a section of the poem as, “‘The fruits of the monsoon / lacks sweetness,’ he says. / Sweet is the season of rains.” Kalaivani Karunakaran translates the same section as, “Monsoon fruits lack sweetness / he says / but monsoons taste sweet.” Another, Jayashree Panicker, interprets, “‘Monsoon fruits are not sweet,’ he says / monsoon times are sweet.” We see quickly how impossible neutrality is in translation: it is clear that each translator brings their unique understanding to the text through their translations. Simultaneously, we are bountifully rewarded in depth with each interpretation of the original text: as the editors say in the introduction, each translation brings with it a “timelessness of even our most ancient poetry.”
This collection is profoundly important as a piece of Tamil literature: a work that prides itself in its diversity of Tamil and therefore Tamil experience and knowledge. It breathes new life into one of the oldest languages in the world.
Bios
Namitha Rathinappillai
Namitha Rathinappillai (she/they) is a queer, disabled, Tamil-Canadian published spoken word poet, organizer, and workshop facilitator. They have been creating, performing, commissioning, and competing as a poet, locally and nationally, since 2018. She is currently based in Toronto, and was the first female and youngest director of Ottawa’s Urban Legends Poetry Collective (ULPC).