Samoan Poet Wins Regional Commonwealth Prize

Congrats to Samoan  poet and novelist Albert Wendt for winning the Best Novel Award the South East Asia and Pacific region for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. His epic novel-in-verse The Adventures of Vela is described in The Sydney Morning Herald as :

... "an exhilarating read'' that blends traditional storytelling and song with contemporary rock music and hip-hop.

The award for best first novel for the region went to Australian Glenda Guest for Siddon Rock.

These are the regional shortlists in their entirety :

Best Book shortlist:

• Summertime by J.M Coetzee (Australia)
• A Good Land by Nada Awar Jarrar (Australia)
• The Adventures of Vela by Albert Wendt (Samoa)
• Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw (New Zealand)
• The People's Train by Thomas Keneally (Australia)
• Parrot and Oliver in America by Peter Carey (Australia)

(Perhaps the only Malaysian book that could have been in the running for this prize this time was Tash Aw's Map of the Invisible World, and it is very sad not to see it up there.)

Best First Book shortlist :

• The Ice Age by Kirsten Reed (Australia)
• After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld (Australia)
• Look Who's Morphing by Tom Cho (Australia)
• Document Z by Andrew Croome (Australia)
• Come Inside by Glenys Osborne (Australia)
• Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest (Australia)

 (So it really wasn't a surprise that an Australian won!)

The regional shortlists for the Commonwealth Writers prize were announced a few days back, and you can see them in their entirety here.

We may not have had a Malaysian on the shortlist, but we did have one on the panel of judges.  Congrats too the Kee Thuan Chye!

The overall winner will be announced next month.

Want a Literary Tattoo?

I've often toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo ... more so now that everyone else seems to have one. A nice rose on the bum. A butterfly on the shoulder. A circle of barbed wire round an ankle.

But now, on The Guardian blog, Shirley Dent (who boasts a William Blake tattoo on her shoulder) has opened up a whole world of new possibilities! She links to a couple of websites that have some really great bookish designs (see here and here).

I will spend some time thinking about what literary tattoo I would choose ... and meanwhile open the question to you.

I know there are some pretty good tattoo artists in town (didn't the delicious Anthony Bourdain get his Ouroboros tattoo done here?). Which would you butterflied-flowerified-skullandcrossboned people recommend?

Incidentally, I remember a very interesting academic paper given at a literary conference several years ago at which the author/poet Albert Wendt talked about the Samoan tatau (tattoo) as a form of literature!

Postcript (2/8/08) :

Even more literary tats at the Gawker.