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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Poetry Extra

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly opportunity for listeners to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

A brand new poetry slot on Radio 4 Extra gives listeners a weekly opportunity to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

Poetry Extra: Broken Paradise

25/06/2017

Broken Paradise

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Broken Paradise

Daljit Nagra introduces 'Broken Paradise' - poetry from Sri Lanka's bitter civil war.

4 Extra Debut. Poet-in-Residence Daljit Nagra introduces 'Broken Paradise' - poetry from Sri Lanka's bitter three-decade civil war. From April 2013.

BBC Radio 4's Poet in Residence, Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry with 'Broken Paradise' featuring poetry from Sri Lanka's bitter civil war. 

To mark the fourth anniversary of the ending of Sri Lanka's civil war, in May 2009, translator Lakshmi Holmström introduces some of the most powerful Tamil poetry to emerge from the 26 year long conflict, in which an estimated 70,000 people were killed as militant Tamil Tigers fought to establish a separate Tamil state in the north of the island.

These poems bear witness to the atrocities committed by both sides and reflect on some of the war's most significant turning points, from the deadly introduction of female suicide bombers to the final bloody showdown on a beach near Jaffna, where government forces conclusively defeated the Tamil Tigers.

Poets featured include Cheran, probably the most significant living Tamil poet and a former journalist now exiled in Canada, whose poems chart the history of the war and of a landscape once idyllic, now devastated. There is also a poem by S. Sivaramani, a promising young woman poet who committed suicide in 1991. In Oppressed by Nights of War she describes the impact of the violence and fear on children.

Presenter Lakshmi Holmström MBE is a widely acclaimed translator of Tamil fiction and poetry. A collection of her translations of Cheran's poetry is to be published this summer, titled In a Time of Burning.

Readings by Hiran Abeysekara, Vayu Naidu and Vignarajan

Producer: Mukti Jain Campion

A Culture Wise production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2013.

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