Essay

GARDEN   OF   POETRY

Vinayagar (Vina) Kandavanam, a Tamil, hails from Nunavil, a village in Chavakachcheri in the District of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He had his early education in his village school Ganesa Vidyalaya and secondary education at Drieberg College, Chavakachchceri. 
Having distinguished himself both academically and otherwise at the Madras Christian College and the Government Arts College of Madras University, India, he took to teaching, a career he pursued for thirty years in Sri Lanka, Lesotho and in the Republic of South Africa.  
He has written three Geography books which were approved by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Education for use in schools and several work-books in Geography, Tamil Language and Literature all of which were published by the reputed Thanaluckumy Book Depot, Chunnakam. 
He is a poet and a writer and is known very well to the Tamil literary world as Kavignar (poet) Kandavanam. He has authored twenty four books, many of which are anthologies of his poems. He was the founder member of two Literary Circles in Sri Lanka, one in Matale, in the Central Province and the other in Jaffna, in Northern Province the latter of which elected him the president eight times.  
Kandavanam is also a dramatist and has the unique distinction of being one of the nine Tamil dramatist selected by the University of Sri Lanka to follow its pioneer two-year diploma course in Education in the teaching of drama and theater. After completing the course, he became the first teacher to teach drama and theater at the G.C.E. Advanced Level in the Tamil region. His specialty is children's plays and one of his plays named 'Wisdom is Strength' was placed first in an all island school drama contest conducted by the Ministry of Education, Sri Lanaka. 
Unable to return to Sri Lanka due to the army taking over his residence in Kurumbasiddy, he moved to Canada from  
the Republic of South Africa in 1988 with his wife, Thavamany, and children, Varny and Varanan and... [continues]

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