Asiatic in June

The June edition of Asiatic, IIUM's literary journal is up online with some very interesting articles, (there's a focus in this issue on the the work of Tagore), reviews and poetry. I found the interview with Malaysian laureate Anwar Ridhwan worth reading though it dismays me that he quotes Wong Phui Nam declaring Malaysian writing in English dead without making an attempt to counter it or move beyond it, when in fact there is plenty happening. 

If you want to submit to the journal, here is the information you need.

New Stuff from Asiatic

The new issue of Asiatic published by the IIUM English Department is out and includes articles about local literature, book reviews, new poetry fiction and even a short play by Kee Thuan Chye!

Don't forget, this is a good place to send your own work too!

Connect with Writers Connect

Writers - here's somewhere you might like to send your writing.

Writers Connect is an online literary arts portal designed to connect writers to writers and writers to readers. It is owned and managed by Word Forward Limited, a non-profit literary arts company based in Singapore.

It welcomes quality creative works in all genres (fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, book reviews, essays, and interviews) from all corners of the world but works on and about Asia are especially welcome. Submission guidelines can be found here.

I don't know how this online publication slipped beneath my radar (it could well just be a case of me being as confused as the proverbial cuttlefish ... yes, I knew about WordForward the organisation, knew they had regular gatherings for writers, but hadn't realised they had got this together!).

Anyway, I would like to point you in the direction of some excellent fiction, some of it written by folks who are friends of this blog. The story of the week this time is Elmo Jayawardena's Tsunami. (You may remember this author from his visit to KL last year.) Other contributors you may know include local mat salleh Yusof Martin and Singaporean journalist and blogger Zafar Anjum. More stories here.

I also need to play catch-up with the poetry, interviews and reviews (the latest of which is Zafar's discussion of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.)

Softblow's New Home, QLRS' Latest Edition

Singaporean poet Cyril Wong wrote to say that SOFTBLOW Poetry Journal is back at a new location :

This journal was located previously at softblow.com. Unfortunately, as some past readers might already know, we were undermined by our web hosting company which threatened to keep us from entering and editing the domain if we did not pay additional sums of money (more than previously agreed) for the official purpose of maintaining a stable site. As none of us had the money to sue, we let the first site and domain be taken away from us.

After softblow.com was down, we received a flood of emails from readers who offered to help with ways of fixing the problem. Then with the help and encouragement of Alvin Pang, a Singaporean poet whose work has been featured in the former version of this journal, we were able to retrieve the works of close to everyone who has ever been featured in SOFTBLOW.

SOFTBLOW has been an online home for contemporary poetry from all over the world since Sep. 2004, featuring writers such as Bernadette Mayer, Jenny Boully, Jordie Albiston, Boey Kim Cheng and Wong Phui Nam, among numerous others. From Nov. 2009, we will have a new selection/editorial team comprising of Eric Low, Gwee Li Sui, Jason Wee and Christopher Ujine Ong.

SOFTBLOW is ad free. Poets will not be remunerated for having their works featured here. This journal will be updated at the start of every month, (re)starting on 1 Nov. 2009. Featured poets will eventually be placed in our Archive to make room for the new poets. If you have been featured in SOFTBLOW but your work does not appear in our Archive, please let us know.

To submit, simply paste 4-6 poems with a short bio. in the body of an email and send it to the editor@softblow.org. Copyrights revert to the authors upon publication. All work published is with their expressed consent.

Thank you for your patience for the time in which SOFTBLOW has been offline and for your offers to help. We are happy to be back and glad for your continued support once more. And if you are on Facebook, you can also join this page for future updates on the journal.

best regards,
SOFTBLOW team

And while we're thinking about Singaporean Literary journals, do check out the latest edition of QLRS. I'm thrilled to bits because it has a piece by my friend Damyanti Ghosh. (Check out her excellent blog, with much of writing here.)

So, writers, these are places to send your own work.

Malaysian Political Imagination and the Novel

While Malaysia is anything but a full-fledged democracy, its relative openness permits a spectrum of debate, which allows for a certain flowering of creativity. ...

... Samarasan, Aw, Tan, and Tei matter because, being from an ethnic minority, they provide a different perspective to Malaysia's divided polity, given that Malaysia's preferential policies benefit the majority, and not minority, communities. Furthermore, these writers provide a local voice looking at the country and its past. This is important, because until recently, fiction about Malaysia or Singapore looked at the region from an outsider's perspective, with the natives offering colourful backdrop ...

Salil Tripathy pens a very important piece on the political imagination and literature of Malaysia and Singapore for the current issue of the Indian literary journal Biblio. You will need to subscribe to the journal to access the full piece.

In the same issue there's also a very nice piece about the litbloggers of Asia by Jai Arjun (who blogs at Jabberwock). Jai very kindly writes about my blog, and also mentions other local bloggers doing a great job - namely Amir, Eric, Glenda. (This article can be read for free but you need to register first).

Poetika

Do you like poetry?

Do you love it?

Do you like it better than shopping?

Think Plath and Auden were your real parents?

Would your life be totally meaningless, worthless, hopeless and unbearable without it?

Do you dream of having your own poetry published so much so that you stay up late at night, night after night, writing your bestest poem ever?

Then you need PoetiKa!

JK

If you saw yourself in that intro, don't be shy about sending your work to Jerome and the other guy whose art you can see atop. The submission guidelines are here. There's also a Facebook group.

Asiatic

Here's a new literary journal to check out and possibly submit your work to. Asiatic is put out by the International Islamic University Malaysia. The editors are Mohamad A. Quayum and Adrian Hare, and the journal offers some interesting new poetry and short fiction, as well as reviews and academic articles. Highlights for me include Professor Quayum's tribute to Lloyd Fernando and Dennis Haskell's The Meanings of Malacca: Identity and Exile in the Writings of Ee Tiang Hong, Shirley Lim and Simone Lazaroo.

Readers Wanted, Submissions Invited

Time to drop in some news about some literary journals with a local interest, which might also be good places for the writers among you to send your work.

Remember Damazine, the online literary magazine for the Muslim world which was calling for submissions last year? Well the first issue is now up for you to enjoy, and Shakeel Abedi has had one of his poems (entitled Together) selected. Congrats!

You can submit your work for future issues, and the guidelines are here.

Also accepting submissions is Cha: An Asian Literary Journal based in Hong Kong. This new online literary journal is dedicated to publishing quality poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, photography, graphic fiction and reviews from and about Asia, and submissions are welcomed. Guidelines here.

And then of course there is the Asian Literary Review, published quarterly in paperback form. This one is Nury Vittachi's baby, and publishes work of a very high standard. Information about submissions is here.

Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS) have their latest edition up with much good stuff in it, including an interview with Malaysian playwright, Huzir Sulaiman. The site, which hit major technical problems last year, as Toh Hsien Min explains, has now been upgraded. Submission guidelines are here.

And finally, there's Softblow, a Singapore-based poetry journal updated at the beginning of every month. More about it, and submission guidelines in the editorial.

Literary journals like these are the lifeblood of a writing community, and we should feel a great debt of gratitude to all those who put time, effort and money to get such projects off the ground.

Writings from the Muslim World

I received an e-mail from Serene Taleb-Agha, the chief editor of a new online literary journal based in Damascus, Syria.

damazine is publishing fiction, poetry, and essays in English and looking for contributers from across the globe.

The focus is on the Muslim world:

... whether it forms the background of the writer, or an aspect of the piece itself. Within that space, we strive to present a rainbow of themes and writing styles. Our biggest criterion is quality. We are looking for powerful, well-crafted pieces that throb with meaning.

The first issue is due to be published on January 31, and details of how to submit your work can be found on the website.

Throwing the Book Reviewer Out with the Bathwater

Mokoto Rich highlights a very worrying trend in the US when he asks Are Book Reviewers Out of Print? Major newspapers across the country, among them the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have been dropping their book review sections. The National Book Critics Circle has initiated a campaign to protest the cutbacks.

Economics plays a part- readers are increasingly accessing newspapers online and advertising revenues are falling. But as author Richard Ford asks in the article, shouldn't a review section be considered a public service?

Rich says that many writers, publishers and critics worry that the spread of literary blogs will be seen as compensation for more traditional coverage.

...an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books.

There are some excellent literary blogs which offer reviews, articles and commentary (and the article singles out Bookslut, The Elegant Variation, Beatrice.com, the Syntax of Things and curledup.com).

But can litblogs, no matter how good take the place of more traditional review sections?

The article quotes a leading litblogger blogger Maud Newton as saying that she would never consider what she does a replacement for more traditional book reviews.

I find it kind of naïve and misguided to be a triumphalist blogger... But I also find it kind of silly when people in the print media bash blogs as a general category, because I think the people are doing very, very different things.

(British critic John Sutherland and novelist Susan Hill you may remember also had very strong views on the subject.)

Another point that emerges from the article is that even the most popular litbloggers are simply not mass media enough to act as any kind of replacement for a newspaper review section - they simply don't get anywhere near as many readers as a newspapers (though those readers who do turn up tend to be more interested in buying books).

What's the situation like elsewhere?

John Freeman on the Guardian blog reports that the recent London Book Fair:
... hosted a panel to discuss the Spanish literary supplement. The tone of the panel was fretful, but it was hard to figure out why. The Spaniards can enjoy over 25 such supplements, we learned, with more on the way. Panellist Rupert Shortt of the Times Literary Supplement blushed for England by comparison.
More about this can be read on Critical Mass.

Zafar Anjum in Singapore also blogs about the issue and is optimistic about the situation in India. (Though tellingly Singapore itself doesn't get a mention!)

In Malaysia we have the Star to thank for an expansion of book pages and the local bookshops for supporting the initiative. We still need more literary writing here, both in terms of quantity and quality, but how far that can happen I don't know. Meanwhile local bloggers play an extremely important role in creating the conversation about books.

I can't end this post without yet another mention of the Guardian which produces a terrific amount excellent literary content enhanced by a blog, podcasts and other technological marvels, and then archives everything (even reviews from years back) so we can keep going back to it. And all of it for free! (Am afraid to ask, how on earth do the economics of this work? The print newspaper doesn't have a vast circulation - less than half of that of our Star actually!)

Postscript

John Freeman asks on the Critical Mass blog how important are reviews in helping you decide whether to read a book at all?

No L-Words Please!

The Australian reports on a new quarterly aimed at fostering emerging writing talent. Wet Ink was launched on 9th December at the University of Adelaide. J.M. Coetzee. (twice-Booker and Nobel Prize winner) was coaxed out of his customary reclusiveness to attend the event and called the publication :

... a brave venture because no-one ever made fame or fortune running a little magazine. They operate on energy and goodwill and generosity. ... What little magazines aim to become are institutions, a fact of life. ...... Simply put, Wet Ink and magazines like it constitute one of the best, and most attractive ways in which the culture of a nation expresses itself.

Apparently though, the dreaded L-word will be nowhere in sight ... because it is thought too scary and offputting for the general reader. (Worth bearing in mind when we plan writing related events here! And here I'm thinking about THAT festival which is even now a twinkle in the eye of Mr. Raman.)