Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism examines five works by the poet Alagiyavanna to demonstrate how Buddhism in Sri Lanka was transformed by the encounters with Portuguese colonialism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism is a work of prodigious scholarship. With close readings of much neglected works of Alagiyavanna, Berkwitz takes us to a world of poetic 'expression' and embodiment of what it means to be Buddhist during the Portuguese colonial rule in Sri Lanka. Beyond a 'critique' of colonialism or emphasis on native 'agency,' the work complicates the stories about religion and modernity available in postcolonial literature.