Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three Nov-Dec 2026.
Don’t stop me, poems by Indran Amirthanayagam.
Don’t stop me
The next day arrives
with its music
and dance, and I feel
ready to say hello.
You can’t stop
this speech.
I don’t care
about anonymity
or that award.
I have already had
two invitations
to Brazilian
literary festivals,
some poems
published
in newspapers.
I am a foreign
correspondent
for an academy
of letters in Brasília.
Go to Coventry,
they say in England.
Go to Timbuktu.
I’ll keep writing
in the language of Camões
because Camões
is also an ancestor.
I come from Colombo.
Our music is called “baila.”
The deadline is approaching
and it’s urgent—finish the manuscript
before midnight? What?
Why not tomorrow
or in six months, or a year?
Why such a rush? Have you
sensed a heart attack to come?
You’re fine, your body is at peace.
Why are you making up
an excuse to pick up your pen?
The world of literature awaits you,
of course, along with some friends
and professors curious about
the migrant’s choices.
But everywhere you write
on this theme.
Do you think that each verse
is distinct, the product
of a single indivisible breath?
What’s indispensable?
The poem or the poet?
The need to meet
the deadline on time?
A Break from Life
Exchanging poems and comments
on WhatsApp doesn’t help—
it’s insistent, critical, annoying,
depending on how you use it.
better to take a break,
a moment of silence, and let
others carry on the conversation.
Ours was great—or so we thought.
Enjoy your life,
your wife, your children.
We have nothing left
in this life except poetry,
until it fails us, confusing
ego with lyricism,
the vanity of human desires,
as Samuel Johnson wrote,
as I note once again,
in these times of repetition
until WhatsApp becomes
a battlefield once more,
a source of anxieties
we don’t need.
Remember the goal.
To live, not to die in poetry.
© Indran Amirthanayagam
Indran Amirthanayagam received Sri Lanka’s State Literary Award in 2026 for White Space Sonnets. The Elephants Of Reckoning won the 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize in the United States. Indran is a poet, editor, publisher, translator, youtube host and former diplomat. He is the author of more than 30 books and translations. For thirty years he worked for his adoptive country, the United States, on diplomatic assignments in Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Amirthanayagam produced a unique record in 2020 publishing that year three poetry collections written in three different languages. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com).writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento. Amirthanayagam has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the 2025 Matwaala Poet of Honor. He is also the IFLAC World Poet/Poeta Mundial 2022.Amirthanayagam writes indranmx.substack.com; indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com; hosts The Poetry Channel https://youtube.com/user/indranam. Indran is a publisher of poetry at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com).