VIS Jayapalan

Born in 1944 in Delft, Northern Sri Lanka, Shanmugampillai Jayapalan is a Tamil poet and short story writer. He began writing poetry in the 1970s and has published over twelve books of poetry and short fiction. During the civil war in Sri Lanka, he fled to Oslo, and now divides his time between Norway and Tamil Nadu, India. A lyrical poet, Jeyapalan has championed the oppressed and was uncompromising in his condemnation of the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers) for their brutality towards Muslim Tamils during the 1990s. He writes with longing of the landscapes of exile. In 1995, the Norwegian Writers’ Association designated him the nation’s best immigrant writer, and his poetry has been translated into Norwegian as well as English and Sinhala. In his later years he has enjoyed life as an actor and received a special jury award at India’s National Film Awards in 2011.