Barefoot Theory: Listening Across Landscapes,...

Barefoot Theory: Listening Across Landscapes, Poetic Cycles from Malarikkal to Kankesanthurai

Author Name : Wasantha Samarathunga, Risindu Ransen

ABSTRACT This paper listens to memory as it moves through soil, stone, sea, and silence. It brings together two lyrical poems from Malarikkal and one poetic ethnography from Kankesanthurai to explore how landscapes carry history, grief, and resilience. In Malarikkal, memory is ecological and quiet. The soil that breathes, the sentinel that  watches, and the crow offers counter-memory from the margins. In Kankesanthurai which is different type, memory is shaped by rupture. The stone holds trauma, the sea carries stories of exile and return, and the soul pulses with the work of healing. In this paper based on lyric theory, ecopoetics and trauma studies, adresses how poetic and ethnographic forms can hold memory without spectacle. These texts do not rush. They arrive slowly, with care. This is not fieldwork with a clipboard. It is fieldwork with a heartbeat. Theory walks barefoot beside metaphor, listening to what remains.