Smither on Style

“The secret of style is to be so absorbed in the subject matter that you disappear into the poem. Like Keats says, ‘You should become the leaves of the tree’. It’s not John Keats writing a poem about a tree, it’s about John Keats becoming a tree and feeling like a tree.”

New Zealand poet and author, Elizabeth Smither, is interviewed in StarMag today by my friend Kadek Krishna Adidharma.

She talks how the small provincial city where she lives provides the material for her writing and how the wilderness lives in her writing despite her outward appearance of conformity. She says that writers must train their poetry muscle, and it's necessary to focus one's energies as one gets older.

I thought this was also a good opportunity to post up a photo (snapped while we were having lunch at delicious during the literary festival) of Kadek Kris who wrote the article. He writes for the Jakarta post, and we first met at the Ubud Readers' and Writers' Festival last year.

Some Litfest Photos

Two poetic lovelies: Sharanya Manivannan with Indonesian poet Lakshmi Pamuntjak (right). I took this the first day of the festival when a whole gang of us descended on Delicious for lunch.

Courting controversy. I introduced one of Dina Zaman's sessions, and she read about from I Am Muslim about "born-again virgins".
Eva Kriseova sponsored by the Embassy of the Czech republic, reading outside Starbucks in Bangsar Village 2. She's a writer with a fascinating story to tell. She worked as a reporter during the Prague Spring in 1986. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia her writings were banned. She lost her job and went underground. Later, she worked as an advisor to President Vaclav Havel.

Benjamin Zephaniah strutting his stuff at Marmalade. I sneaked a preview of his poetry at this session but enjoyed much more his great performance at Central Market last night. Plan to write more about that later.

Even though I had interviewed Canadian author Camilla Gibb a couple of days before, I was fascinated to hear even more about her writing.

I didn't manage to get to Tash Aw's workshops but met up with him at MPH Bangsar Village for his "meet the public session". Such a very nice guy. He told me that he was working hard on the second novel and trying hard to not to be distracted.

I introduced New Zealand poet/novelist Elizabeth Smither's session at Alexis. I enjoyed her well observed poems - small true moments. Was also stunned by just how prolific a writer this lady is - she has 14 volumes of poetry (soon to be 15), 4 novels, 3 (or was it four?) collections of short fiction, and other published works. All this produced around her full-time librarian's job! She says she writes 250 words of a novel everyday, and keeps a notebook on her to jot down ideas for poetry that occur to her throughout the day.