Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

UPNG Bookshop and Press is active in publishing PNG authors. The Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler said in From Where You Dream (2005) that one must never under estimate the powers inside of oneself that would have one flinch and convince oneself that one is doing the right thing. His reference is to the powers of reading a good book. “Now, of course you must read in order to be a writer, and read ravenously. But there are points in your writing day, and even in your life, when you run the danger of hiding in somebody else’s voice, somebody’s else’s vision and sensibility. A moment comes when it’s time to find your own artistic identity and find a way into your unconscious. And then you will need to manage your reading carefully,” are the wise words of Robert Olen Butler that had me thinking about what to write this week. I have to write three or four articles for this column a month ahead. After that I follow the tradition of leaving the journalistic fi...

Soaba's Storyboard: TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA LITERATURE AND POLITICS

Presenting my books to Founder and Principal of PNG Paradise High School during the National Book Week 2012. What you throw away can become someone else’s treasure. In the year 1988 I was working as a trainee librarian at the then Goroka Campus of UPNG. It was the first job I had had after graduating with a BA degree with majors in Literature and Philosophy. I was a library fellow in the Michael Somare Library of UPNG at that time. During one of my trip every morning to the Goroka dumpsite to discard all the rubbish I picked up a book that the library had thrown away. It had no cover. The rest of the book remained intact. I took the book with me with the intention to read and keep it. It turned out years later that the book served the basis of one of the chapters in my study of Papua New Guinea writing. The book, Three Short Novels of Papua New Guinea (1974) was written by August Kituai, Jim Baital, and Benjamin Umba. The study of this book was done d...

I first came to know him as a reliable physician that my family went to for all our medical problems. His medical clinic was based at the Waigani shopping centre, opposite the PNG Bible Translation centre.   My family and I depended on this man for all our health problems. Dr. Powesiu Lawes is the person I am referring. He hails form Loniu Village, located on the beautiful Island of Manus Province. I came to know Dr. Lawes as a friend as well. For some years I had not seen him after he had closed his clinic and moved on in life. It was many years later I would meet him again in Port Moresby. This time it was for a different reason. I met him at the National Museum and Arts Gallery for a symposium on arts and culture in development organized by the National Cultural Commission. Of all the people in the world I had not expected Dr. Lawes to attend this kind of meeting. Dr. Lawes told me he was into arts exhibitions.   I must admit that took ...