Seni Seneviratne
Seni Seneviratne is a writer, singer, photographer and performer. She was born in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1951 to an English mother and Sri Lankan father. She has been writing poetry since her early teens and was first published in 1989. Her poetry and prose is published in the UK, Denmark, Canada and South Africa. Her work has been published in ‘Flora Poetica’(Chatto & Windus); ‘The Redbeck Anthology of British South Asian Poetry’(Redbeck); ‘Healing Strategies for Women at War’(Crocus); ‘Language of Water, Language of Fire’, (Oscars); ‘Talking Black’,(Cassell); ‘Bad Reputation’, (Yorkshire Arts Circus); ‘Miscegenation Blues’( Sister Vision Press) and children’s anthologies - ‘ Masala: Poems from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka ’(Macmillan); ‘Free My Mind’, (Hamish Hamilton).
She won second prize in the Margot Jane Memorial Poetry Prize, Onlywomen Press. She has given readings and performances in Vancouver, Cape Town, and around England. Her poetry has been broadcast on radio and recorded on audiotape, “Climbing Mountains” and CD, “Seven Sisters”. Her photography has appeared in Feminist Arts News, Autograph Open Photography Show, Signals Changing exhibition and in a solo exhibition ‘Moving Words’. .
Her collaborations include a mixed media installation, ‘Memoried Mosaics’ which was exhibited in Sheffield’s Open Up event in 2004 and at Outwood Grange College, Wakefield; an art song for piano and voice - ‘Dandelion Clocks’ commissioned for Leeds Leider Festival and performed in October 2005; ‘A Wider View’, verse accompanied by saxophone quartet, commissioned for Leeds launch of Architecture Week, June 2006.
Her collection Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin was published in March 2007 by Peepal Tree Press. She is currently working on her next collection.
Further details of loss
Written by Seni Senevirante
(Reasonably priced family home. Parents deceased. No chain)1940's semi detached home, located
at the quiet end of the road,
Pantoum - December 26th 2004
Written by Seni Senevirante
My father’s birthplace has been swamped by a tsunamiThe mouth of Kalu Ganga rendered mute
As the sea gods woke and raised an army
To settle an old boundary dispute
My father’s uncut gems
Written by Seni Senevirante
Rubies.Stones of loss, filled with fire words taunt my
growing up with everything my father never
told me, throw me from one colour of missing
Eighteen
Written by Seni Senevirante
For KateRoses shout above a table, filled with this year’s
birthday breakfast – ripe strawberries, flushed cherries,
Remembered Raspberries
Written by Seni Senevirante
As children we gathered raspberries, foraging throughthe jungle of bushes halfway down our garden.
Six eyes searched the tangled green for flash of red.
Never mind the prickles, the stinging weals along our arms and legs
A Wider View
Written by Seni Senevirante
From the back yard of his back-to-back,my great great granddad searched for spaces
in the smoke filled sky to stack his dreams,
high enough above the cholera to keep them
Opus tesselatum
Written by Seni Senevirante
Diminutive tesserae, bright shards of marbleand glass paste - copper, cobalt, nickel, gold
and lapis lazuli. My fingers, sticky with Pliny’s
mortar, three parts sand to one part lime,