BY PHILIP FITZPATRICK

THE GOOD NEWS is that the prize money is in the bank, thanks to all our generous donors.  Any other funds we can squeeze out of sponsors can go towards the publication of The Crocodile Prize anthology showcasing the work of the winners and the next best.

I noted in the first report about The Crocodile Prize literary contest that the whole process has been a learning experience both for organisers and entrants.  This has continued and evolved even further.

The competition is a new experience for many writers and they are understandably unsure about the process.  Quite a few have contacted us. 

The questions range from simply things like how many times can I enter (as many times as you like) to, I’m thinking of submitting a story about such and such, is that a suitable subject for the competition?

Generally the answer to the latter question is yes, but once or twice we’ve replied by saying send us the story and we’ll have a look and let you know.  So far we haven’t knocked anything back; we’re very broad minded and confidently expect our readers to be the same.

In providing advice we have been careful not to influence the creative processes of writers to the detriment of others.

Some of the stories that Keith has published on PNG Attitude have necessarily been lightly edited.  This has gone no further than correcting spelling mistakes and obviously unintended grammatical errors.  Encouragingly, suppressing the urge to go any further has not been difficult.

 There is no way we wish to interfere with the flavour of the stories and poems.  We have embarked on a quest seeking to showcase and encourage PNG writers, not some pale PNG imitation of European literature.

That stance has not only forced us to examine our motives for launching the competition but also to consider the nature of PNG literature in general.

One of the interesting things we discovered is that a few writers in PNG and the Pacific area in general have, in their endeavours to be published, resorted to journals and publishers in the so-called developing countries, most notably in Africa.  Russell Soaba’s Portrait of a Parable was originally published in the African journal Wasafiri for instance.

African literature has some interesting parallels with the situation in PNG that are worth noting.  The most obvious similarity is a relatively recent transition from an oral literary tradition to a written one.

In his novel, Elizabeth Costello, the South African writer and Nobel prize winner, J M Coetzee, who now lives in Australia, has one of his characters, an African writer ask the question, ‘Did we in Africa have a novel before our friends the colonisers appeared on our doorstep?’  One might ask the same question about PNG.  The answer, of course, is yes but they weren’t made of paper and ink.

The character goes on to note that reading books is essentially a solitary experience, a bit like eating alone or talking to yourself; it is not an African way.  Similarly I suspect it is not a PNG way either.

He also describes how literature has been part of the colonising process and describes how European literature has been complicit in the destruction of oral traditions and even languages.

He concludes that the time has come, in Africa at least, for this to stop.  It is time for those special intangibles in African culture, like the way people live, speak and dance and which are not easily expressed in the written word to come to the forefront.

He maintains that this can only be done by African writers and that the European style and rhythm of writing may not be, in fact, suited to this end.  It is a point worth considering in PNG too.

If the entries so far are any indication, poetry is the medium in which many PNG writers are most comfortable.  Entries in the poetry section are currently running at four times the short story entries.  Perhaps it is the imagery, rhythm and cadence of the singsing that is the parallel oral equivalent to the poem.  We’ll keep an eye on it.

On a couple of occasions we have encouraged the poets to try short stories and the results have been extremely good – PNG poets make good short story writers.

Of course the more authentic the PNG writer is to the tenor of his or her culture, the more exotic their work will appear to someone used to a European style of literature.  It might be that the work of an authentic PNG writer is, in fact, too exotic for those readers and this may limit the avenues for publication.

This is why it is important not only to encourage authentic PNG writers but to also to think about a local market for their work, hence the anthology.

Might it not also create a problem for our Australian judges you ask?  They might have to ask themselves ‘who am I to judge these stories and poems?’  That is why we have ensured that we have a fair proportion of PNG judges to whom we can refer things when we are unsure.

So what is the point of this yarn?  Well, in the main, it is a circuitous way of saying to our entrants that they should not be constrained in their expression by European literary rules of writing because we won’t be constrained in our judgements.

In that sense I am eagerly awaiting our first tok pisin short story (we’ve already had a couple of poems).  Does anyone remember the Simbu yarn of kela man and maus gras rendered in tok pisin? 

I have happy memories of the late Joe Nombri standing on a chair in the ADC’s office in Kiunga reciting it to an enthralled audience - a tad risqué, unfortunately.

The Crocodile Prize is a literary contest for Papua New Guinean writers. There are three categories, each offering a first prize of K2,500: for short stories, poetry and journalism. More details here.