Indran Amirthanayagam

Poet, essayist, and translator Indran Amirthanayagam was born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He was raised in Sri Lanka, London, and Honolulu. Amirthanayagam has authored numerous poetry collections, including The Elephants of Reckoning (1993), Ceylon, R.I.P. (2001), The Splintered Face (2008), Uncivil War (2013), and Coconuts On Mars (2019). He writes, translates, and publishes poetry and essays in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. In a review of The Splintered Face, Jennifer Garfield described how “Amirthanayagam’s poems achieve a devastating intimacy that necessarily dissolves the separation between countries and peoples. … His rhyme and cadence are gentle and disarming, and the muscle of his poetry lies in its initial passivity, mimicking the helplessness of both the living dead and the simply living.”

Amirthanayagam’s poems have won a Paterson Poetry Prize and a Juegos Florales. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, BOMB, Siempre, La Gaceta, and other magazines. It has also been included in numerous anthologies, including The United States of Poetry, Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, and ALOUD: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. A US diplomat, Amirthanayagam has lived in several countries, including Haiti, Belgium, Argentina, and the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire.