Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

Dear Reader, This review was done before the unexpected passing of the late Dr. Regis Stella on last Wednesday 18th April, 2012. He was looking forward to this review to mark the launching of the book on Thursday. I remember him at this time of losing one of Papua New Guinea's robust, dynamic, and original writer scholar. May his legacy live on.... Now a new book on reading Papua New Guinean literature is out. It is a collection of critical essays published over the years in various international and local journals. The essays are brought together under one title: Unfolding Petals: Readings in Modern Papua New Guinean Literature (2012). It is compiled and edited by Regis Tove Stella of the Literature and English and Communication Studies program of the University of Papua New Guinea. The book is published by the UPNG Press and Bookshop.   A number of leading authorities in Papua New Guinean literature are represented in this book. The book looks at the beginning of Papua New...

There is no shortage of creative writers in Papua New Guinea. There is, however, a shortage of publishers for all our writers to have their works published. The books that we read and buy for our schools are all published by overseas based publishers and writers. Budding writers are in search of publishers, which are either non-existent or if they exist their interests are confined to institutions, organizations, and narrow business interests. With this kind of scenario some of us decided to become self-publishers—a decision that is both a curse and a blessing, depending on what we are able to do with limited funds drawn from our own pockets. A curse because we come from a land of so much resources that the government is happily earning from it, but turns a blind eye on supporting the literary arts and culture develop to full maturity. It is a curse because the road from writing to publishing is not part of the developmental package of this country. Writing and publishing are s...

 Melanesian writers: Regis Tove Stella (PNG), Nora Vagi Brash (PNG), Sam Alasia (Solomon Islands), USP Fiji campus, 1999.    One of the outstanding playwright and poet to emerge in Papua New Guinea is Nora Vagi Brash. She remains the foremost and the only Papua New Guinean female playwright. Nora was involved with acting in amateur theatre, radio plays, and street theatre in early 1970s. Her exposure to the world of theatre in England inspired her to write her own plays on her return to Papua New Guinea. The National Arts School employed Nora as an assistant lecturer in puppetry, dance, and drama. She then moved on to become one of the two artistic directors with the National Theatre Company. Nora wrote her own scripts for the puppets using tradional stories of Papua New Guinea. The National Theatre Company toured local villages and performed in the streets. They went to the Pacific Arts Festival in Rotorua and Wellington, New Zealand. They also danced in Point Venus ...

 Ahuia in later years at Kilakila   (courtesy of Eric Johns, PNG History Through Stories Vol.2)  The emergence of indigenous literary traditions across Oceania goes far back to the early introduction of European technologies, ideas, writing instruments, literacy, and print media in the 1880s. Reverend W. G. Lawes, who settled with his family in Hanuabada in 1874 translated the four gospels in Motu. The translation of the gospels was completed in 1885. Lawes held the view that to establish the Christian church it was important to develop the abilities of people to read Christian literature. By 1920s a reasonable number of Motu Koitabuans knew enough English to communicate with the missionaries and the administration officials. Many Papuans, however, were uninterested in using English to capture their experiences or to express themselves in writing. The English language was viewed as an uncultured language with the power to corrupt the cultural and social fabric of the Papua...

  With so much going on around us we tend to forget about important foundations of our history. I could not get out of my mind the much neglected discussion on the first Papua New Guinean writer. Every now and then we need to acknowledge the important parts of our history as we move forward. I would like to acknowledge the first Papua New Guinean to write a book in the 1930s. A New Irelander by name of Ligeremaluoga wrote and published his book under the title The Erstwhile Savage: An Account of the Life of Ligeremaluoga in 1932. Ligeremaluoga is from Kono village in New Ireland Province. Ligeremaluoga’s book is by all accounts the first written account by a South Pacific Islander. Most of what we know as Pacific writing is dated to the 1960s and 1970s. Last month I presented a paper at the University of Hawaii to discuss another early Papua New Guinean writer by name of Ahuia Ova of Hanuabada, who published his memoirs in 1939, six years after Ligeremaluoga’s autobiography. ...

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...

 Callan Services worker examines girl --courtesy of Callan Services   We hear little about the world of deaf and hard and hearing in Papua New Guinea. In recent times I was contacted by an old friend and colleague, Steven Wawaf Labuan. I was thrilled with the contact after so many years. Wawaf, as I had known him, was teaching linguistics as a tutor at the University of Papua New Guinea before he returned to the Morobe province. The first thought I had was that Wawaf had completed a book of poems chronicalling a bohemian life outside the corridors of high learning in the great grassland of Markham Valley. That was possible, rememberingWawaf as that radical poet willing to recite nationalisticpoems along side those streect preachers at the crowded Boroko commercial center. But not so, I would soon discover several emails later. Steven Wawaf Labuan is a different kind of poet altogether. He is someone who is more interested in working with teaching language to the deaf an...