{"id":248457,"date":"2026-08-16T12:07:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T06:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=248457"},"modified":"2026-08-16T12:07:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T06:37:02","slug":"poems-in-transit-reading-palms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/poems-in-transit-reading-palms\/","title":{"rendered":"Poems In Transit: Reading Palms"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Gayanga Dissanayaka<\/a> –<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Oshanthaka Cabraal grew up in Mount Lavinia from a very young age and recalled living close to both the school and the beach. He attended St. Thomas\u2019 College Mount Lavinia and was involved in the performing arts of drama, the choir and also worked for the school magazine, which means he did a fair bit of journalistic writing as a student. Therefore, literature easily became his favourite subject. “I kind of enjoyed reading poetry, analysing it between the lines, and considering how structure contributes to meaning. These things did have a certain impact and interest in my life,” said Oshanthaka. “As a child, somewhere in middle school, one of my teachers gave me an assignment to write a poem. I think that is the very first poem I wrote and I wrote a couple more poems after that over the next few years. I was able to resurrect that only after I left school and was reading for a bachelor of arts honours degree in English in the university of Kelaniya.\u201d Today, Oshanthaka Cabraal is the author of a poetry collection titled, \u201cReading Palms\u201d and is a celebrated poet in the literary community who was also longlisted for the 33rd Gratiaen Prize.\"\"<\/p>\n

While going to university, Oshanthaka was also working part-time as a teacher at St Thomas\u2019s. He recalls writing the first few poems at the back of the number 200 bus that were eventually published in Reading Palms. \u201cI would sit right at the back and type in poems onto my phone, based on things that inspired me as a result of the degree I was doing. I was reading and studying the works of writers like Richard de Zoysa, Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, Patrick Fernando, and at the same time also drawing inspiration from incidents, current affairs in the world and in Sri Lanka,” the poet said. These poems can be based on violence, economic struggles, motherhood, poverty\u00a0 <\/span>and also our own history. It can be the ethnic conflict, or very particular issues such as the burning of the Jaffna library. Likewise, Oshanthaka’s writing was a way of responding to the lives of others, both past and present. Some of these are rather personal, or issues related to his career as a teacher and how he felt about the education system. It can also be about issues relating to love or identity. Therefore, according to the poet, there is a mixture of things explored in Reading Palms.<\/p>\n

Oshanthaka believes that his love for poetry has a lot to do with the fact that his day to day activities and work involve a lot of poetry itself. \u201cBut more than anything else, in my opinion, poetry has this unique ability to convey emotions in the most concise, synced manner. Because it\u2019s about not telling everything as they are literally. It\u2019s about considering how to convey an idea or an emotion through imagery or a motif,\u201d explained the poet. \u201cBecause we don\u2019t realise that we read between the lines all the time, not in a literal sense but in a highly metaphorical unknown subconscious level. For instance, we rely so much on another person\u2019s body language when we communicate with them\u201d He explained how there\u2019s something so beautiful, mysterious, almost magical about unpacking a poem. Some poems can have multiple interpretations, some poems are mysteries because the whole idea is hidden in words, metaphors, images that the reader has to engage with and unravel. For Oshanthaka, as much as this kind of lyrical language is expected in prose, poetry also brings it out more since it is more concise and successful in that manner.<\/p>\n

Oshanthaka left Sri Lanka in 2022 to take up a job at Eton college. This meant a significant change to his life because he was very comfortable in his employment at Stafford International School at the time. “I was very happy there, the teaching was very rewarding, and the school itself was a wonderful employer.\u00a0 <\/span>With that change of environment, moving to Eton meant that I was in a completely different culture. The society and even the neighbourhood was quintessentially British upper class. And with that came a certain distance between me and my poetry because I was adjusting to a new life. I was preparing myself for this new adventure,” he said.<\/p>\n

At some point, Oshanthaka shared his work with two people and one of those poems was Reading Palms<\/i>. He recalls his reader immediately loving it and finding some similarities between the palm reading culture of Sri Lanka and the tea leaf reading culture. “This drew me back to my poetry and made me revisit my work,” he said. At the same time, Oshanthaka also shared it with another person who appreciated the culture and the history in the poems and the immense amount of Sri Lankan cultural references. With this kind of engagement with people, he was encouraged to publish his collection. “Until that point I thought it was a neglected, hidden word document in my computer. I remember contacting The Jam Fruit Tree Publications but I didn\u2019t quite feel ready to put it out at the time. But again after about a year, I decided to go ahead with it. I wanted the collection to be something that could be related to by the readers. I wanted the subjects discussed in the book to be felt, seen and heard by the readers,” noted the poet. The biggest challenge for Oshanthaka was overthinking and perfecting the writing. He mentioned that something that is extremely difficult to do was finding the point where he was satisfied with his poems. Therefore, he found himself constantly changing his poetry. Even after he submitted his poetry to his publisher, he found himself sending them multiple drafts for certain poems. The production process was also rather challenging but I was very lucky to have my publisher help me through that process virtually. “Having my book longlisted but not being able to attend has been unfortunate as well but I\u2019m truly grateful for the recognition,” he mentioned that straddling this duality of space of writing about Sri Lanka but living elsewhere and the challenges that come with that distance is probably the most difficult thing he has faced.<\/p>\n

“The community involved in this field is an interesting aspect of writing and publishing this book, spanning from the teachers and professors who taught me to write poetry to the friends who have read the work and commented on them,” said Oshanthaka. “The Gratiaen longlisting for Reading Palms was unexpected since these poems weren\u2019t initially written to be published. But they did resonate with an audience and with the jury and I\u2019m extremely happy with the distance it went in that journey. It\u2019s a memorable moment I\u2019m grateful for.”<\/p>\n

Oshanthaka believes that the book will have some resonance across a wide audience. He hopes the book wouldn\u2019t only become a time capsule capturing only certain moments in history but would also become a reference point and a spring board for the future. He hopes that it would be revisited constantly to use as a point of thinking and discussion around certain issues and aspects of a society and even our personal lives.<\/p>\n

All the sales points and reviews of Reading Palms can be found here: Linktr.ee\/ReadingPalms.OC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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