Literary Criticism and Me

Since my birth in 1979 at Arawa, then the provincial capital of North Solomons province of Papua New Guinea, I never had set my foot on West New Britain Province where my late father, John Roka is from. In Bougainville, I went to school. In Bougainville I was when the bloody armed conflict came in 1988 and passed by.

My views are therefore, absolutely Bougainvillean. I entered the PNG Attitude, a webpage promoting PNG writing currently, just this year 2011, and began publishing articles that are often so anti-PNG in nature. For this, I had received a good number of criticisms from a wide variety of persons around the country and the region.

Criticism, anywhere is good for those of us who consider ourselves as learners or beginners. With an open mind we turn to absorb its acidic attacks. For, from them I suggest we are learning the world around us. This makes us more and more focussed on what we turn to bring into society as dreaming and working writers.

Without criticism I know that, I cannot measure my impact in society or, I just could not glean where, I am not doing well. For me, though it is a new experience, I had attained some valuable assets in helping myself as a struggling-to-publish writer.

Madang Technical College Cultural Show Bougainville Photos

Show ground packed with growds

Bougainville students, combined with fellow Bougainville students of Divine Word entering the show ground

Bougainville girls dancing the Kieta peoples' cultural dance, called tore

Jerome, from my home district of Panguna and student leader of Bougainville students of Madang Tech. receives the winning trophy for the bamboo band dance show

Divine Word student, Basil, a Sepik Bougainville die-hard(left), Jerome and Hansol from DWU and a Bougainvillean, displays the trophy

Shock of leaving my friends

Me,in red shirt and basket against tree trunk, and WNB students @ our end of the year picnic.

Together we have being from the early days of 2011 academic year of the Divine Word University here in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea. In three days time I am leaving for my beloved homeland, my Solomon Island of Bougainville.

Since walking into this university in February of this fast fading 2011, I did enjoyed every bit of our routined study days. I made up new friends, some good and some bad, to the way I see the world and its folly.

Being an anti-Papua New Guinea thinker in political terms, I at the very beginning registered with the Divine Word Bougainville Students Association and as time went by, I discovered that the most of my fellow Bougainvillean lot, lack the art I love the most, that is politics. This does not mean, I want people to directly get involve into politics, but I needed people to behave and interact in a manner that Bougainville is out there to be heard and seen.

I, thus, joined the West New Britain Students Association of this university. This is where my late father comes from. My fellow patrilineal relatives began the most interesting club I seen here. Many friends I'd made and worked and stayed on with. Sociable people were these non-Bougainvilleans. While, in my Bougainville lot, we have a tradition that even you a welknown Bougainvillean is still to be seen as a stranger.

Anywhere, in such a shit I had made up my way to this far end-ending 2011 academic year and ready to go home.

But, going home is now a becoming a problem to my heart. I had friends and a study routine that my heart is struggling to let go for this christmas break. Around me, fellow students from all over Papua New Guinea are packing their belongings ready to depart. Some of us are thinking of trading our few belongings for money or beer in the squatter settlements surrounding this university.

Any means that works out, is the one to take...for we are to be going our seperate ways.

Hearts in tears of losing a friend or study mate, we are going with a dream of coming back in 2012.

Western Literature must not prevail in Papua New Guinea

Melanesians existed on the island of New Guinea for more than 50 000 years and still we, as Papua New Guineans just don't appreciate that fact and give away our developing art to the recent imperialistic cultures.

Art, in the like of myths, folklores and legends (including dramas, dances, paintings...etc) existed in PNG long before the Europeans reached our coastlines. But they ought to be given the respect for bringing to us the new culture (education) of reading and writing that has now given us a way for us to export our art into the world.

Europeans gave us the way to have our art forms known and traded for a little income. But, money, ought not be the basis of PNG art; however, national awareness or selling our identity must be the fundamentals of that old Melanesian art.

The artist, be him a poet, prose writer, novelist, painter or actor, must be developed from within the Melanesian environment and brought out there for the world to see and learn the Melanesian world. It must not be the 'neo-colonialist' that must streamline our art for his own benefit. The Africans did show us the way to go with the 1960s Negritude movements in Europe. They called for all African writers to bring African values or symbols into their art forms. The reasons, as I see it, is to make sure that Africa was 'known' and 'respected'.

Coming back to PNG artists, especially writers, they are always being subjected to 'outside' scrutiny. A western editor must streamline his or her art (PNG) to suit the western readership. It is acceptable since, in PNG we still lack a culture of loving our own art. But, do we really have in our heart, a love of PNG art in its purest form?

A writer's style, in PNG, must be his or hers. This is a art that really reflects who this artist as a person and from which corner of PNG he or she is from from.

A piece of poetry or short story that has no 'western' salting, but blessed by a Papua New Guinean like Russell Soaba, is what I as a Bougainvillean shall, whole heartedly, call it a piece of PNG art.