Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

  A recent publication Postcolonial Literatures of Climate Change included a chapter written by John C. Ryan, entitled "Islands Within Islands: Climate Change and the Deep Time Narratives of the Southern Beech. Ryan cited two of my poetry collection: 1) Lomo'ha I am in Spirit's Voices I Call (1991) and Hembemba: Rivers of the Forest (2000). I enjoyed the analysis, which I share here on my blog:  

The threat of international intervention and involvement of Sandline mercenaries in the Bougainville Crisis was sabotaged by a military faction. On the economic front the Papua New Guinea Kina was devalued, government’s external reserve was depleted, and a slow decline in economic growth began. Social conditions and lifestyles of people changed: increased rural urban drift, overcrowding and overpopulation in urban centres, increased law and order challenges, uneven development between major centres and districts, and the increased number of young people out of school without formal employment. This social political canvas served as the context for my colleague, Dr. Regis Stella, a Bougainvillean, to write Gutsini Posa or Rough Seas, his first novel. Dr. Regis Stella completed the book through a writer’s fellowship at the famous University of Iowa Writing School in USA. The Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, published the book in 1999. Since its