Revelations In The Quiet Carriage: Devika Brendon reviews ‘The Office Of Literary Endeavours’ by Mark Roberts
This is a jewel of a collection, full of elemental images and resonant engagement with country, history and human feeling.
Devika Brendon
‘Bring Me The Firmness Of Her Hand’: Tribute to Yasmine Gooneratne by Devika Brendon
Yasmine Gooneratne was a poet, a writer of short stories and novels, and a literary critic, editor and reviewer. Born in Sri Lanka in 1935, while the country was still known as ‘Ceylon’, she was educated at Bishops College School for Girls and the University of Peradeniya, where she was a dedicated student of English literature.
Everything Is Inverse – a poem by Devika Brendon (for Yasmine Gooneratne)
Devika Brendon is a teacher, reviewer and editor of English language and literature. Her poetry, short stories and academic articles have been published in journals and anthologies in Sri Lanka, Australia, India, Africa, Italy and the USA
A Condition That Gives Mysterious Abilities: Devika Brendon reviews ‘Oh My Rapture’ by Gemma White
These poems operate in media res, where the writer addresses the reader and engages us in the midst of a flow of ideas and feelings which have begun prior to our arrival, a continuous discourse with that world.
Vantage Points On Lived Realities: Devika Brendon reviews ‘The Unintended Consequences Of The Shattering’ by Linda Adair
Adair is not ‘oblivious to the visceral sadness/ that still abides in living memories’. And her poetry breaks the smooth surfaces of several silences that our society endorses,
Transfusions Of Truth and A Far Cry: Devika Brendon Reviews Anne Casey’s ‘The Light We Cannot See’.
My review of this dazzling book has been delayed by my father’s recent death. But the greatest tribute I can give to Anne Casey is to say that reviewing her work has been one of my greatest consolations in the past several weeks. I find myself rereading the poems in this collection several times a day, like a devout person telling their prayer beads.