Young writer turns simple subjects into creative poetry
There are many compelling reasons why writers should consider self-publishing: if you can create a PDF document of the book you have written, you can learn how to send your work out to the international reading public just by pressing the PUBLISH option in a simple and cost-effective process over which you have total control. This enables a writer to choose their own cover, target their audiences to align with their chosen genre, and most significantly bypass the traditional barriers to publication, and the gatekeepers who operate to block them.
Traditional publishing is costly, both in time and money, and comparatively inflexible in the choices it offers authors who wish to micromanage their own work. Imagine being able to cut through the possibility of rejection by grumpy old publishing houses, fast track through the long waiting time for approval of your manuscript, avoiding the stresses of dealing with a nit-picking editorial process, and start pushing out your work into the world wide web, being able to track its progress every step of the way, cheered on by your friends and admirers.
People who follow this path to self-publishing glory speak using the language of action, conquest and violence: they ‘crack the code’, they penetrate the mystery, they ‘conquer’ the Amazon charts, they ‘kill’ the Goodreads ratings, their meteoric rise to fame makes waves that rock the known world, etc.
The narrative of youthful energy and forceful vitality is definitely an appealing one. And creativity itself is, of course, a direct line to God and Goddess. But in the rush to publish, made possible by the myriad options enabled by this digital technology, one of the pre-existing and most significant problems which has operated to block the rise of literary standards in Sri Lankan writing in English is likely to intensely escalate. That is: the lack of an editing process which could make a good book great, and a great book an enduring classic.
The fiery exuberance and self-assertive drive required to write a narrative, to bring an idea into form and into emergence, is a very different energy from that required to edit it: editing beyond the surface level of correcting spelling requires a trained and sceptical eye, sensitive appreciation of what the author is intending to achieve, patience, familiarity with the relevant genre, and sufficient time. In this country, Editors of fiction seem to be hard to find, and these professionals need to make themselves more visible and accessible. Authors, especially young authors, often feel that they would not be able to afford the skilled developmental and structural editing that their manuscript requires. These writers thus create reading groups of personal friends and beta readers who offer feedback and response without a fee, as a favour, and then edit their work themselves, with mixed results.
And they use digital means to create their own readership: via social platforms including Facebook pages, Instagram updates, Snapchat and Twitter. They selfcreate a community of fans by informing their followers of each stage of their writing process, from sneak peeks at their private notebooks and sketchpads, through conversations about their inspirations and research, through stylised confessions of their own emotional highs and lows, right through to interactive opportunities offered to their fans to choose the cover art, and the final ‘reveal’ of the book itself, in its multiple accessible formats.
This strategically creates empathy and goodwill, as the readership is invested in the outcome, ‘liking’ and ‘commenting’ interactively every step of the way. And then the birds and the bees come in: Tweet and Twitter updates, to generate buzz. More Snapchat and Instagram shots of where to buy the book, updates on how it is going, thanks to all the loyal supporters of the crusade, and screen shots of Goodreads reviews, truncated due to constraints of space.
Enticements and reader magnets are offered to ‘get the reader in’ - free short chapters, free prequels - which then make the reader want to come in a little further, and invest in your dream. It is a facsimile of friendship behaviour, and it works to create the peer acceptance and tribal identification that is crucial to publishing success in the digital world. True or false? Noise and brilliant branding obscure the substance of the matter, and gloss the text itself with apparent allure. Many of the awards we read about have been generated by peer approval, solicited support and recognition of an author’s profile: their creation of their own visibility via successful platform-building.
As one writer recently expressed it, who cares if the reader likes you or your work, as long as they buy it? At point of sale, it’s mission accomplished, and onto the next one. And then the awards, the long lists and the short lists and the ceremonies and the gold and silver stickers on the limited edition print copies. The marketing carnival with its crusade-like parading goes ever on. But the literary quality of the work often decreases in value, because the focus is on marketing rather than creation of a high quality piece of writing.
To misquote Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, we are now seeing ‘the principles of mass production at last applied to literature’. It is notable that many of the emerging writers today are working day jobs in the fields of marketing, advertising and information technology. This certainly gives them sharp skills but also inevitably creates a mindset which commodifies the literature they produce, from pre-production onwards.
A 29-year-old writer who works part-time at a bookshop in York has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her debut novel.
Fiona Mozley, the second-
In a nutshell: A young man growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and 60s leads four parallel lives.
Judges’ comment: “An ambitious, complex, epic narrative... that is essentially both human and humane.”
In a nutshell: A 14-year-old girl living on a commune in the US Midwest befriends some new arrivals.
Judges’ comment: “A novel of silver prose and disquieting power that asks very difficult questions.”
In a nutshell: A boy and girl fall in love, move in together and consider leaving their unnamed country.
Judges’ comment: “A subtle, compact piece of writing about a relationship, its blossoming and digressions.”
By Oshani Alwis
youngest author to be up for the prestigious literary prize, wrote Elmet while commuting between London and York.
Emily Fridlund, another
In a nutshell: A boy remembers his life in a house his father built with his bare hands in an isolated wood.
Judges’ comment: “Timeless in its epic mixture of violence and love, it is also timely... with no punches pulled.”
In a nutshell: President Abraham Lincoln goes to a Georgetown cemetery to grieve following his young son’s death.
Judges’ comment: “Daring and accomplished, this is a novel with a rare capriciousness of mind and heart.”
In a nutshell: A dying 101-year-old man is watched over by his closest and only friend.
Judges’ comment: “An elegy for lost time, squandered beauty but also for the loss of connections.”
The art of composing poetry requires a sense of creativity, imagination and language skills. Chathushkie Jayasinghe is a young poet who possesses the ability to combine words and phrases in a way that transforms simple subjects into creative poetry. A past student of Vidura College and Devi Balika Vidyalaya, currently a first year undergraduate at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, she recently launched her debut collection of English poetry under the name of “Illumination”.
“I wanted to convey a positive message through my poems, leaving out the sense of melancholy and I hope that people would feel enlightened after going through the poems because after all illumination stands for light,” Chathushkie says. The granddaughter of veteran journalist and cartoonist, Kalakeerthi Thalangama Jayasinghe, Chathushkie received poetic inspiration from her grandparents. debut novelist, is also up for the £50,000 award.
The winning book will be announced on October 17.
Mozley, a PhD student at the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies, is one of three female writers on a shortlist evenly divided between the sexes.
The author told Woman’s Hour the issue of home ownership was on her mind while writing her novel, which takes its title from the old name for the West Riding in Yorkshire.
Veteran writer Paul Auster has been shortlisted at the age of 70 for 4 3 2 1.
Ali Smith, who has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, makes the cut again with Autumn, the first in a quartet of books named after the seasons.
Hamid, shortlisted in 2007 in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is once more in contention thanks to Exit West. US writer Saunders, best known for his short stories and novellas, is shortlisted for Lincoln in the Bardo, his first full-length novel.
The shortlist is completed by History of Wolves, the first novel from US writer Fridlund.
“I wanted my poems to reach out to as many people as possible. They are written in a way that can be easily comprehended while capturing the surface meaning as well as the underlying meaning of the poems.”
The opening poem of the anthology is “Dear Gran,” in which Chathushkie explicitly shows her affection and emotional attachment towards her grandmother as “A shoulder of comfort, Whenever mother scolded me, One who loaded us with sweets, On each and every ‘pension’ day”, reminding read- Courtesy BBC
The Owl and the Pussycat Hotel invites aspiring poets and writers to participate once again in the ‘Edward Lear Prize for Poetry Sri Lanka’ competition in collaboration with the Fairway Galle Literary Festival for the second consecutive year. The competition is open to young Sri Lankans between the ages of 18 and 30 years.
Chair of the Edward Lear Prize for Poetry, Reita Gadkari together with her business partner Shane Thantirimudalige affirms that Lear is their all-time favourite poet and that ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ was a favourite childhood poem of hers. In fact she loved it so much that this was what inspired her to name her first investment in Sri Lanka after the poem.
She continues to say that every line in the poem resonated with the space she had created and she was thrilled to dedicate her first Sri Lankan project to this amazing poet.
The competition is open only to citizens of Sri Lanka (or passport holders) between the ages of 18 & 30 years, entries should be an unpublished single poem or a collection of up to 5 poems.Each poem should have a minimum of 200 words and the total of 5 poems should not exceed 1200 words.The theme should follow in the vein of Edward Lear’s ‘Nonsensical Poems,’ bringing about a feeling of lightness and optimism to the world in which we live.Only the first 200 entries will be accepted.
The Edward Lear Poetry award 2017/2018 is open for entries from September 1, 2017. Entry forms are available at www. edwardlearprizeforpoetry.com and entries will close on November 10, 2017.
For further information email info@ edwardlearprizeforpoetry.com
Winners will have to submit a recent photograph and a brief CV for placement on the website. ers of their own grandmothers.
In “An Ode to a Crow” she presents this commonplace subject in a different light. Chathushkie brings back the memories of grandmothers who managed to feed the grandchildren pointing at the crows on trees. Breaking away from the traditional style of odes, she pens the significance of the crow by stating, “Remember the foolish crow who dropped that piece of cheese, And taught us not to get fooled, by words of Willoughbys?” and “Remember the wise crow who used stones, to reach that last bit of water? Showing how anything can be achieved, if we try a little harder?”
Poems like “Chicks don’t fly” and “The true plight of the little mermaid” address the issues of women’s subjugation in society. “Girls, why not try to be the eagle than become that silly chick feeble” she writes in“Chicks don’t fly”.
“The Basket”, “Baby Thoughts”, “Friends” and “The Cripple” project significant aspects of childhood innocence untouched by social corruption. Chathushkie writes, “People say that he’s a Hero, ‘cause he saved a Nation, But this cripple is my Hero, for he is on vacation” in “The Cripple” using the voice of a little girl who is overjoyed that her father who used to be a soldier, now stays home and plays with her after being crippled in the battlefield. The sensitivity of the subject matter and the realistic mindset of a child are effectively perceived by Chathushkie.
The poems “How to be intelligent” and “Weeping Earth” address the issues of human nature and the pitiful plight of the environment due to human activities.
“My intention was to write on social problems, to transform small, so called insignificant day to day subject matters into magnified, broad issues which people would have more to think about,” she adds.
‘Illumination’ is available at the Colombo International Book Fair from Sept 15-24 at stall numbers 89, 90 & 91 of (Hall no. B), Sooriya Publications.