Friday Sep 18, 2026
Friday Sep 18, 2026
Friday, 18 September 2026 00:05 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Marianne David
Journalist, editor, writer, and poet Marianne David has published her first poetry collection, ‘I Wear My Watches Stopped,’ a deeply personal collection of 70 poems that explores the intricate territory of love, loss, grief, memory, desire, and hope.
Published on 1 September, the collection brings together poems written before and during 2020, marking the culmination of a project that Marianne says has been “a long time coming”.
Reflecting on the collection, she said: “‘I Wear My Watches Stopped’ is a collection of poems that navigates grief, love, and memory. What is grief really, when we unwrap it, but love? And what is love, if not a garment covering our nakedness, stitched through with fear, loss, longing, and regret, intertwined with threads of hope and joy? And who are we without our memories? Our remembering?”
She adds: “The book has been a long time coming. The poems were written before and during 2020, but it was only in mid-2026 that I thought I should finally publish them.”
The collection has already received praise from poet and academic Dr. Vivimarie VanderPoorten, who describes Marianne’s poems as intensely personal works that confront love, loss, abandonment, joy, pleasure and grief without flinching.
“Marianne David’s unflinchingly personal poems on love, loss, abandonment, joy, pleasure and grief dig deep into your heart, forcing you to return to your own experiences of them,” VanderPoorten writes in the book’s blurb.
She highlights Marianne’s visceral imagery and the way the poems move between the deeply personal and the political, observing how public violence and national grief become intimate, lived experiences.
“The poems … refuse comfort and refuse to look away—from the body, from desire, from the wreckage love leaves behind,” VanderPoorten writes, adding that in doing so, they offer something “rarer than solace: … recognition.”
For Marianne, that intersection between memory and experience is at the heart of the collection. Her writing examines the ways love and grief are intertwined, and how the memories we carry can shape who we become.
Marianne has spent much of her professional life working with words. A writer, editor, journalist, poet, and media and communications professional, her career has been shaped by a longstanding love of words, storytelling and the written word.
The collection is also a tribute to the Editor who gave Marianne her first opportunity in journalism – Lasantha Wickrematunge, founding Editor-in-Chief of The Sunday Leader, where Marianne began her career in journalism.
The book’s cover was designed by Deshan Tennekoon, while the collection was printed by The Jam Fruit Tree Publications.
‘I Wear My Watches Stopped’ is available at The Jam Fruit Tree Bookshop, Green Path, Nugegoda and at Barefoot Bookshop, Colombo 4. Orders can also be placed directly with The Jam Fruit Tree Publications on 072 726 8078.
