Writing across borders

By STEVEN WINDUO
A FELLOWSHIP of writers can offer the much needed inspiration, one needs as a writer. I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in the Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange (WrICE) program fellowship in the Philippines. I had two weeks of immersion in the world of writers and writing, but with incredible sharing of our own writing with other writers of Asia Pacific region. The WrICE program as I have written about in my last article is a program of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.
One of the things that stayed with me is the discussion we had in the University of the Philippines after a reading of our own works.
I read a poem “Across Borders” published in my anthology A Rower’s Song (2009). I wrote the poem in Alberta, Canada on the 4th of April 2008. It was written after I had read my poetry to a very receptive audience in the University of Alberta, Canada.
I was inspired to write about meeting other writers and all the wonderful people who love writing and literature. I was also inspired to have been in Canada during the late winter month, a moment that had its own revelation of how people in this part of the world live through severe winters, but welcome the spring in the month of May.
I was interested in the indigenous people of this part of Canada whose oral traditions have been passed down through generations through the word of mouth.
Some of these have been written as I had studied them during my graduate study years at the University of Minnesota.
The relevance of this poem for me during our plenary readings and discussions in the University of the Philippines was the notion of writing across borders and what it means to us as writers. Can we write across borders and whose voice are we privileging? What is at stake when we write outside of our national borders? What are we foregoing when we claim ourselves as writers with no borders?
I think the biggest question of the night at the University of the Philippines was the question of what our responsibilities are as writers at this time in human history? What are our responsibilities as national writers or generally without such parameters around our responsibilities as writers? Are writers to this modern world driven by modern efficient media technologies? Are writers needed today when the world of media technologies have made writing, publishing, and sharing of one’s work easier and less costly?
Our discussions were lively and each of us knew that it was not just a simple effort of picking up the pen to do some scribbling on a blank piece of paper. Writing is an act of commitment to the craft and to the power it wills as a tool of expression, whether personal or political. Our hunch was that the question of writing as a committed activity remains very much connected to our own views, positions, and constructions of our society.
Through our commitment to the craft of writing we chose to construct our world as we imagined it based on our ideals and beliefs in that world. The choice of genre or form is an individual choice of the writers but the words that the writers combines or brings to the form is of critical importance.
Selections and combining of words to create a world that is imagined as a community, lends itself immediately to the discussion about writers as creatures of a society. The society informs the writers about what they write about and this gives credence to the theory that no writer is free of his or her society. Hence, this is where the question of a writer’s responsibility comes in to our discussion.
These thoughts are great thoughts but the reality is that most writers I know are not writing full-time. One cannot earn a living as a creative writer of poetry, fiction, or even plays in Papua New Guinea.
We cannot support ourselves as writers if we choose to? Many of us have a salaried job that pays for our bills and other daily expenditures instead of living off our writing. Maybe there are Papua New Guineans who are living of their writings? I may be wrong! Most of my books don’t seem to get into the list of education books purchased for schools in Papua New Guinea.
I took a position a long time ago to continue to write without worrying about the difficulties and challenges writers face in Papua New Guinea. Many writers work in isolation and live with families and people who misunderstand them as writers. It is difficult to exist as a writer in an environment where no one cares whether you write or not. It is difficult to write in an environment where no one reads what you write.
I ponder over these fundamental questions as a writer because it helps to reassure myself that I am a writer. What I do as a writer is the decisions I have to make? I may decide also that writing is not for me, because it does not put bread and butter on the table for me every morning. I may resolve to follow my passion for writing without even worrying about other things in life.
One thing is for sure! Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I remember. I am not about to change any of that for whatever reasons that other people have or for whatever reasons people have about writing within certain borders.
Different social and cultural borders society has placed on our persons and limited the expression of individualities in our societies are some of those borders that writers have to deal with in their writings.
The best part of participating in the WrICE fellowship in the Philippines was sharing the experience of writing with other international writers.
I am indebted to the WrICE program of RMIT, Australia.