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The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here
Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection
Vidyan Ravinthiran’s second collection is a book of sonnets for his wife. These are love poems that turn analytical, consider the world, and in which the pronoun ‘we’ aspires to stand for a larger community, including (if you like) the readers themselves. Many describe life in northern England for a mixed-race couple, considering both the redemptive force of love and the cultural origins of our discontent.
Brexit; racist and sexist abuse; class; our work-life balance, and our relationship with institutions (be it our employer, or the NHS); taboos surrounding mental health; civil war in Sri Lanka; media representation of minorities; immigrant anxieties: these poems look inward, but also outward. Worrying at the link between society and our private lives, they scorn a politics which would put us in separate boxes. Love, and imagination, may not conquer all, but as recent shocks suggest, ‘we’ must at least try to understand people different from us.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection
Vidyan Ravinthiran’s second collection is a book of sonnets for his wife. These are love poems that turn analytical, consider the world, and in which the pronoun ‘we’ aspires to stand for a larger community, including (if you like) the readers themselves. Many describe life in northern England for a mixed-race couple, considering both the redemptive force of love and the cultural origins of our discontent.
Brexit; racist and sexist abuse; class; our work-life balance, and our relationship with institutions (be it our employer, or the NHS); taboos surrounding mental health; civil war in Sri Lanka; media representation of minorities; immigrant anxieties: these poems look inward, but also outward. Worrying at the link between society and our private lives, they scorn a politics which would put us in separate boxes. Love, and imagination, may not conquer all, but as recent shocks suggest, ‘we’ must at least try to understand people different from us.
- GenresPoetry
60 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 27, 2020
Vidyan Ravinthiran's book is rather lovely.
It is the poetry of an ordinary man dealing with the world. And whilst there's politics here - and there's politics everywhere. People just give it different names - it is fundamentally a collection of love poems.
The poems feel like they're confronting issues that we all - well, perhaps not all - face and are a call to empathy. That we should, as another poet famously said: 'Love one another or die'. Except there's perhaps nothing here as clear cut as that.
"...Like many,
I had forgotten that time isn't money
and I don't need to always be on the move
within the world you've shown me how to love."
Today
There's a conversational quality to the poems that makes you imagine Ravinthiran just saying them over a cup of tea, but there's more to them than domesticity. There are questions and concerns about modern Britain and our attitudes to race, to class and to each other. There are poems about family, about identity but most importantly there are poems about love.
It is the poetry of an ordinary man dealing with the world. And whilst there's politics here - and there's politics everywhere. People just give it different names - it is fundamentally a collection of love poems.
The poems feel like they're confronting issues that we all - well, perhaps not all - face and are a call to empathy. That we should, as another poet famously said: 'Love one another or die'. Except there's perhaps nothing here as clear cut as that.
"...Like many,
I had forgotten that time isn't money
and I don't need to always be on the move
within the world you've shown me how to love."
Today
There's a conversational quality to the poems that makes you imagine Ravinthiran just saying them over a cup of tea, but there's more to them than domesticity. There are questions and concerns about modern Britain and our attitudes to race, to class and to each other. There are poems about family, about identity but most importantly there are poems about love.
November 24, 2025
Exceptionally charming, clear-eyed, domestic, self-reflective, gently inventive sonnets.
***
FROM THE WINDOW
I can see the gate creak open, and you enter
along the tip-tilted path plants on either side
sling rainy green across. That’s when you encounter
the big, inopportune, wet, pink, rose,
brushing it aside with a look that’s sad.
Seeing I don’t know what in your face,
I go halfway only – a thing unprecedented –
down the stairs, waiting on the latch,
you breathing hard… I can’t bear
it any longer – sprinting to surprise
you, I’m rebuffed. It’s as if you know
the secret of my pausing on the step,
my lonely fear of being brushed off
as your hand did that shining flower.
ARTIST
When you were young you’d draw and paint.
Then your brother said all you could do
was copy down what was in front of you.
So you stopped. Sometimes you start again.
He’s bought you watercolours. He is a saint
but what’s done is done. I don’t,
for more than a rearriving moment,
understand. For his role in your family was mine
in mine. How could I never learn,
till watching you, what sketching means:
touching with your eyes what has been given
again, and again, and again. It’s the way you were raised.
The way you were erased. But I envy your line
that self-forgetful vigilance – its hesitation, even.
***
FROM THE WINDOW
I can see the gate creak open, and you enter
along the tip-tilted path plants on either side
sling rainy green across. That’s when you encounter
the big, inopportune, wet, pink, rose,
brushing it aside with a look that’s sad.
Seeing I don’t know what in your face,
I go halfway only – a thing unprecedented –
down the stairs, waiting on the latch,
you breathing hard… I can’t bear
it any longer – sprinting to surprise
you, I’m rebuffed. It’s as if you know
the secret of my pausing on the step,
my lonely fear of being brushed off
as your hand did that shining flower.
ARTIST
When you were young you’d draw and paint.
Then your brother said all you could do
was copy down what was in front of you.
So you stopped. Sometimes you start again.
He’s bought you watercolours. He is a saint
but what’s done is done. I don’t,
for more than a rearriving moment,
understand. For his role in your family was mine
in mine. How could I never learn,
till watching you, what sketching means:
touching with your eyes what has been given
again, and again, and again. It’s the way you were raised.
The way you were erased. But I envy your line
that self-forgetful vigilance – its hesitation, even.
May 31, 2020
This is a lovely collection - poems full of love, enjoyable to read. Despite the title (which is flagged up front as Larkin anyway), lovely but not flowery. Although all the poems are for his wife Vidyan Ravinthiran addresses a wide range of issues here, some very contemporary. I especially liked 'Faraj' [sic]
It's a gorgeous volume with a beautiful cover and, although this isn't usually a criterion for poetry books, good value for money. I was surprised by how satisfying it was to have a double page spread of four poems.
It's a gorgeous volume with a beautiful cover and, although this isn't usually a criterion for poetry books, good value for money. I was surprised by how satisfying it was to have a double page spread of four poems.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews