Tamil Terrains: poems, translations, reflections, edited by Nedra Rodrigo and Geetha Sukumaran

I am a reader who loves to know about the process of creating books. This book, Tamil Terrains: poems, translations, reflections, edited by Nedra Rodrigo and Geetha Sukumaran (Trace Press, 2025), emerged from “Root, Branch, Driftwood,” which were Tamil literary translation workshops held on Zoom but rooted in Toronto. The editors designed and facilitated these for the trace: translating [x] series. They did this from an intentional point of care and inclusivity, to translate in an anti-racist, feminist, and decolonial way. Rather than having one definitive authorial translation, as in the Western tradition, the subjectivity of the nature of transferring information and emotion across language and culture was made part of the goal of the process. They followed the tradition of vazhinool (guiding thread), to offer multiple translations of the same poem by translators from varying geopolitical locations, knowing they are informed by their lived experiences. Part of the work was examining what heritage means in the case of diaspora. What is shared culture? What you inherit is not only the poetry but you inherit “loss, trauma, and the experience of learning your language in the context of racism and isolation.”

So many aspects of this book are interesting: it evolving from workshops, a focus on women and non-binary poets, an invitation to learn about Tamil poetics and diversity within the Tamil experiences of diaspora. It is a thoughtful and respectful guide to process. We have in the text the original Tamil in side-by-side. Here’s a stanza from “Vanni, December 2012” by Nillanthan. In translation by Thamilini Jothilingam:

The Vanni refugee
waits for a call
from a time
when unsown fields
grow taro roots
instead of landmines.

To see the same poem translated, or transcreated, in different hands with notes on why fascinates me. I can get immersively geeked out at seeing one poem in the round even if I can’t access the sound.

Not all seem to be in multiple translations. “Pariah God” by Sukirtharani was translated in parallel by Kalaivani Karunakaran and by Subhanya Sivajothy. The former translated a stanza as p.84,

If one ploughs the land
sowing one’s sweat
it is pariah labour.

while Subhanya translated the same critique of use of language, as p.85,

To plough the land,
and sow your sweat
that is pariah-pain.

People participated online if they identified as Tamil regardless of fluency using written text, voice recordings, and bridge translations of classic and contemporary poetry. The editors explained, “Our strategy meant rejecting colonial models that normalized translating for a Eurocentric reader, or patriarchal modes that elevated language fluency and gender norms as indicators of cultural purity” and encourage the validity of different interpretations from a source text stand as “a form of resistance against the monolithic identities[…] Resistance is not a shutting out but a turning towards each other.” (p.76-77)

The book form of these workshops allows us who opt in to be privy to conversations of who is the audience and what is the relationship between source text, transcreaters, reflective texts and the eventual readers. The drift of differences could be absorbing.

What we don’t get is the full benefit of months of connecting and dialogues. We do get echoes. We get footholds if you want to climb further later. They elaborate: “in designing these workshops, we asked whether classical Tamil concepts like thinai could remain relevant to diasporic Tamil people.” Thinai? “This ancient Tamil poetry immerses the listener or reader in the five landscapes: mountain, forest, field, coast, and desert.” The implications of the sense of place informing poetry intrigues. The book is organized by poems of these respective landscapes.

In workshops that I have been in, we’ve done translations of Wang Wei’s “deer park”, each seeking to deep time of it in our own tongue. I collect translations of it and a couple of other Tang poems that get reiterated though a focus on metaphor or sound, on syllabic nearness or formality.

Some of the source poems that this group used were 3rd century, some fishermen folk songs, and others contemporary recited poetry by Abi Jeyaratnam transliterated for participants, so there’s some sense of the sound if they don’t speak Tamil but identify as Tamil. One perspective that informed the translation: “everyone in my world was equally Tamil—who would I be speaking to or speaking for? “Bragging to your brother about your birth home,” as the saying goes”(p.102).

What was it that Cohen said, poetry is the ashes left after living well? The doing is the important thing. This book is by-product of sitting with poetry together, a model more of us would do well to practice. I could happily sink into a book twice as long with more variants from each source and more elaboration on thinai’s constraints, but as an introduction, it is complete.

Nedra Rodrigo is a literary translator, scholar, writer, and literary curator. She has translated five novels by Devakanthan. Her forthcoming translation of Rashmy’s poems, “Songs in A Time of Confinement” received the 2024 PEN Translates Award and will be published by trace press in 2026.

Geetha Sukumaran is a literary translator, Tamil poet, and humanities scholar. She has translated Sylvia Plath into Tamil, and the poet Ahilan’s work into English. She was born in India and lives in Tkaronto.

Publisher: trace press (November 1, 2025)
Paperback 5.5″ x 8.5″ | 186 pages
ISBN: 9781775256786

Pearl Pirie

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Pearl Pirie's latest is we astronauts (Pinhole Press, 2025). Pirie’s 4th poetry collection is footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021) won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. www.pearlpirie.com and patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet