Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

At least it was worth it to speak to these young audience at the Kopkop College last year's National Book Week. I appreciate the activities organised in the school during the Book Week. I enjoyed the performance of the young ones. I had the help of my ever reliable colleague Mr Sakarepe Kamene on this occasion. Thank you. May this video remind Papua New Guinean children to write their own books when they grow up!

Two Sisters and Nokondi's Head  Cheryl Winduo (author); Tommy Ella (illustrator) ISBN 10:  9980891785   /  ISBN 13:  9789980891785 Published by  University of Papua New Guinea Press, 2016

Two Brothers and a Wild Dog (Window on Books) Langston Winduo (author); Peter Ella (illustrator) ISBN 10:  9980891890   /  ISBN 13:  9789980891891 Published by  University of Papua New Guinea Press, 2016

For me as a writer and scholar living and working in PNG, I am always weaving the narratives of journeys and inter-island connections in my work and scholarship. I talk about the constructions of cultures and peoples of the Pacific in their literary and cultural production. The life of a writer-scholar is woven around the narratives we weave about ourselves. It sounds more like the life of a silk worm weaving its own world from its own silk. Sometime I have to wear the mask of a writer and see the world through its eyeholes. Sometimes I wear the scholar’s hat to talk about cultural discourse and literary imagining.   My discussions anchor in the notion of text that sometimes my students get tired of listening to me talk about it. This process of writing and reading text is considered a socially productive force: “It is all and any of the means of production and reproduction of real life” (Williams 1977: 91). The production of text and the act of reading invol...

I suspended my class on Literature and Politics on both Tuesday and Friday, this semester, so that my 50 plus students can have the opportunity to vote in the 2017 PNG General Election. The majority of the students in this course were Political Science students, who will become bureaucrats, policy makers, and social engineers of the national conscience. Some of them will become national leaders someday. Some of them are voting for the first time in the PNG General Election. Voting at the UPNG Drill Hall did not take place on Friday. Students and staff gathered in numbers to exercise their rights as citizens of this country. To their dismay, the Electoral Commission polling officials provided a limited number of ballot papers. The students demanded that the polling be deferred until the Electoral Commission attends to their concerns. Like others voting in the Port Moresby Northwest Electorate the inconvenience meant we had look around for the next polling station wh...