Технические характеристики
`Why does the Third World Hate us so much?` The American citizen asked himself As he ran along the street. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, America learnt a lot about itself. Just who was to blame for this apocalyptic disaster is the subject of the first of these two extended poems by a Sri Lankan Tamil, someone who instinctively aligns himself with the Third World in the quotation above. His second poem, `The Song of a Liberated Zone`, is focused on north-east Sri Lanka (Ceylon), home to the oppressed Tamil people. The Tamils could be likened to the Catholics in Northern Ireland during `the Troubles`. The islands off the northern Sri Lankan coast (`ants, crawling on the tip of a mango`) were overrun by the national army, and a long-running anti-terrorist war against the Tamil Tigers came to an uneasy end... but only after exodus, transportation, rape, burning and torture. As K Sivathamby aptly says in his foreword to these provocative poems, `Poetry is not merely a matter of saying sweet things about sweet matters. More truly, it is genuine language of a thoughtful mind and an aspiring heart, longing for a better world.` Filled with amazement at man`s treatment of his fellows, yet filled with hope for humanity as well, M Ponnambalam`s vision employs an exile`s sharpened eye to describe the problems of America`s attitude to global politics, and the experience of terrorism and its aftermath in the Third World itself.