Amherst: silent, rural, poetic and serendipitous ~ Malinda Words

I’ve spent the past few days in Amherst, Massachusetts, with my friend, the poet John Hennessy. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and lives a few miles away from the campus.

‘A few miles away’ makes it quite rural. From the balcony of his second floor apartment one can see dozens of cows grazing in the meadows across the road. Beyond the farmland there are hills covered by forest. On certain dawns, even in late October, the sunrise is spectacular; bright red streaks caressing the crest of the hills. Sometimes it is dismal; rain clouds seamlessly dripping into a curtain of mist. This morning I woke up to find it was snowing. Wet snow. Unusual for late October in these days of climate change, John said, although it would have been ‘normal’ ten years ago.

The mist lifts as the day proceeds, detailing the landscape, a less than vibrant cocktail of fall colours, the green of the meadow, black forms of the cows with their heads down, diligently scrolling, scrolling, scrolling the dew-laden grass, black ribbon of the road, cattle sheds and a single house, yes, the only one that can be seen from John’s balcony.

The first time I heard of Amherst was more than 30 years ago. Amherst College, to be exact; back then I hadn’t heard of ‘UMass, Amherst.’ Amherst College was one of two schools I applied to as an undergraduate seeking to transfer from the University of Peradeniya which, like all universities in Sri Lanka at the time, was closed — I had completed just one academic year in three calendar years.

Amherst rejected me and I received the notification after I had already arrived at the other school. John, interestingly, had rejected Amherst when he was applying to colleges. That’s a story for John’s memoirs, but we are planning to go there and take a picture. We could caption it as ‘What Amherst College missed’ or ‘What we missed,’ but right now we are tending towards the former.

He took me to Book Mill, a quaint bookshop with a cosy cafe by a stream, showed me Emily Dickinson’s house which is now a museum and dropped me off at the W E B Du Bois Library where I read some quotes accompanying photographs of the great man. ‘The irony of it all,’ I told myself. About Du Bois’ quotes, I mean.

Obviously I cannot blurb a university (UMass) that was established in 1863 or a college (Amherst College) founded in 1821 and certainly not a town, the history of whose name goes back to 1759. I can tell an Amherst - Sri Lanka story though.

John the Poet, as my sister refers to him, lives in a small house unbelievably rich in poetry. In each of the few days I’ve been here John has received at least two books of poetry, usually periodicals which he has contributed to as poet, translator or editor. John has countless stories about poets and poetry. ’John Hennessy, poets and poetry,’ is an article I will never be able to write, though.

However there is one book, an anthology, that I must mention: ‘Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala & English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diaspora.’ I am among several dozens of poets featured in the collection and John wanted me to sign it. I opened the book to a random page. It was a poem by my favourite contemporary Sinhala poet, Ruwan Bandujeewa, translated by Chamini Kulathunga.

That name! I first met Chamini when she was still an undergraduate at the University of Colombo. She was interested in literary translation, especially the work of Mahagama Sekera. Chamini left Sri Lanka to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa. I hadn’t seen her in over five years. So I texted her, asking how she was and informing her that I was in the USA, in Amherst to be exact.

‘I’m in Amherst as well.’

So we met at the Du Bois library (outside which John had dropped me). Talked. And later we went out with John the Poet and his son, Nick the Playwright. The conversation was a walk among poets, poetry, script-writing, theatre productions and academic life. Quite a place for serendipity Amherst is, I thought to myself.

Now it’s past midnight here. I can make out the hills far away. There’s mist in the valley, I notice. One streetlamp drops a circle of light on the road. Amherst is silent. Rural. Poetic. Lovely to visit.

John and I at Amherst College (finally!)

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 259th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

03 November 2023

Amherst: silent, rural, poetic and serendipitous

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