My Womb, A Barren Land

“Yes, My Womb is a Barren Land
Yet,
My Heart,
My Heart is where everything was,
Everything is ”

“The human heart is a magnificent land. At the same time, it’s a treacherous place to wander in. Bertholameuze Nisansala Dharmasena brings forth her second poetry collection as ‘My Womb, A Barren Land.’ To read ‘My Womb, A Barren Land’ is to experience a landscape of emotions. In her overall exercise, Bertholameuze drags these emotions from their unarticulated comfort zones, emotional hiding places, and fading moments of the past to the public domain, assuming perhaps that the journey from the words and the worlds of private suffering and anxiety to the limelight of the public sphere might be a process of catharsis - for the person and collective. In that process, it seems to me that Bertholameuze fulfills Pablo Neruda’s belief that ‘poetry is an act of peace.’”

Prof. Sasanka Perera, Department of Sociology - South Asian University, New Delhi