Warriors

"Warriors won the Aryamati poetry prize in 2021. The selected poems are a brave testimony to Sundra Lawrence's linguistic ambitions. The pamphlet spans a thirty-year history, against the shadow of the Sri Lankan civil war, told from the voices of first and second generation British Tamils. We are privy to a poetic sensibility that seamlessly interweaves themes of migration and conflict with empathy and a deftness of touch. Lawrence peels back layers of cultural identities, shifting through zones of language; forging new identities in found locations; to saving "the seconds/ that slip into the soil" of early motherhood, to "100,000 books burning to black pollen" to "love in a two-star hotel off the Harrow Road". This collection holds a candle to the dark, brimming with courageous and complex love. "