“If you can’t get a job … you can always write!”

BY KEITH JACKSON

When I was in Port Moresby last month for the inaugural Crocodile Prize awards, I had the great pleasure of hearing the veteran Papua New Guinean poet and novelist, Russell Soaba, talk about his literary career and his writing.

I absent-mindedly left my notebook at the Australian High Commission, from where it has now been recovered, and I want to share the notes I scrawled while Russell was presenting to our writers workshop….

“I SPEND so much time writing about Papua New Guinea that I feel as much part of it as it is part of me,” says academic and leading PNG writer, Russell Soaba.

“I started writing in the seventies, and I had immediate success. Perhaps I was too successful too soon.

“After two volumes of poetry and two novels, I became so famous I felt I could never again measure up to the quality of that early work.”

Speaking of the practicality and utility of pursuing a literary career in PNG, Russell said: “I tell my students not to worry – if you can’t get a job, you can always write!”

“The joy I felt,” Russell said of judging the 178 poems entered in the 2011 Crocodile Prize (the poetry award was won by Jimmy Drekore).

“There were so many various new voices coming into PNG literature.  Some of the work was new, some traditional, but mostly it was exciting stuff; probably the most exciting I’ve ever read.

“I got the thrill of our poetry today!

“Writers should not be discouraged by critics; we should be challenged by them.

“A poem is a poem only because of its dramatic force.  Never forget that.”

Comments

[Leonard Roka]

Renagi's words, 'writing and reading is good for the soul' is a reality to me, personally.

But, I badly lack awareness of my audience's liking and interest and the structuring of a whole plot inregard to the climax of my story.

But comments and Phil and Keith's words are becoming the lamp to my path.

[Reginald Renagi]

Writing (and reading too) is very good for the soul.

So keep writing and enjoy life as it comes - one day at a time.

[Basil Peutalo]

Being my own boss is what I am doing right now! I enjoy it to the full. It has its headaches and heartaches but that is where my life gets its richness from.

Writing as a life is definitely enriching, not so much in terms of monetary or wealth per se but in the world that you share with others.

I am working on being a self-employed business person and hope to write about it often. In this case I create my own life and livelihood as a business person and hopefully as a writer (the latter in due course).

Both styles are based on the principle of creating your own job and livelihood.

[Leonard Roka]

Keith, you just stated it all.

I, for one, spend all my life in Bougainville as a child in the 1980s, then through the crisis and still today.

My first visit to WNBP's Bali is only this year's semester break. Thus, my love of writing took me in a Bougainvillean environment and not a West New Britain one.

In any career I think of that I am free to do as I wish is writing. There is no boss to dictate orders here and there. After all I hate being ruled.

Just write till you die.