Of literature and ‘frotezts’

 

Lakdasa Wikkramasinha saw people with words as rebels or rather advocated a rebellious role for them. He wrote:

The poet is the bomb in the city,
Unable to bear the circle of the
Seconds in his heart,
Waiting to burst.

In this poem, titled ‘The Poet,’ he describes the poet (and by extension any writer/artist) as one who, ‘tossing a bomb into the crowd, takes notes.’ He adds, ‘the one who, from an unseen distance, levels on the tripod that black rifle with sights that see as far as his soul.’

There are poets like that. Writers and other artists too. It is not ours to pass judgment on ideal subject matter for such people, but it is true nevertheless that there are poets and other artists who do exactly what Wikkramasinha advocated. They disrupt status-quo one way or another and seek to awaken people from, say, political slumber and hopefully drive them to collective and transformative political action.

I remembered this poem last Sunday at the Galle Literary Festival (GLF). Now, it’s been quite a while since I went to the GLF. I’ve dropped by briefly a couple of times either to meet someone or deliver something, but the last real GLF in my case was in 2011.

I wrote down various observations/criticisms of the GLF back then for the Sunday Observer and not much has happened to change my views on the event, essentially, ‘better to have it than not, but nevertheless an elitist gathering that largely ignores local literatures and writers.’  No need to re-write that stuff.

This time I went to Galle because my younger daughter wanted to see what it was all about. I spent some time in the Fort with my friend Janaka De Silva. There’s a story there.

 

I had interviewed and written about him years ago when I was at the 'Sunday Island.' He had told me that he was planning to open a gallery in the Fort. It was to be called ‘Sithuvili (Thoughts).’ Then I lost touch. At the 2011 event, I happened to be walking down Leyn Baan Street, Galle Fort, to a place called Serendipity Café.  I had been invited to an event that was taking place outside of the Galle Literary Festival (GLF); ‘outside’ in that it was not included in the GLF Programme.  A book launch: ‘Froteztology’ by Marlon Ariyasinghe.

And then I saw this sign: Sithuvili. Triggered a memory. I went in and found a laminated copy of that Sunday Island article (Janaka’s “Sithuvili” gives a sexy twist to the traditional). Janaka wasn’t there, but I got his number, called and re-connected and we’ve remained close friends.

‘Sithuvili’ has been upstaged by a new gallery which Janaka has named ‘Galle Fort Art Gallery.’ We talked as he showed and explained to me what was new (I have visited this gallery a couple of times over the past few years). Then I came across Marlon’s ‘Froteztology.’

 

I flipped through the pages and there were at least a couple of poems related to the GLF.

One was titled ‘Kolambata kiri, apita thaamath kekiri’ referring of course to the popular slogan that gained currency way back in the early eighties when Ranil Wickremesinghe, a cabinet minister of the then government, tabled a ‘White Paper on Education.’ Here are some excerpts.

We are not to be welcomed
Dirty, dusty, uncultured barbarians
The vulgar unassociables from the hills
(Except for Trinitians)
To their dinner dances
To their Gratiaens
To their GLFs or CFFs.

We are but sand beneath their patrician feet
We are here to provide comic relief
Material for their fiction their poetry
Pawns for their sick demented plays.

There’s more of course, but here’s the ‘bomb’ a la Lakdasa, who by the way thought writing in English was a kind of cultural treason. Debatable, but just jotting that down. The poem. It’s titled ‘To Amateur poets.’

Write you bastards
Write till your ink runs dry
Write till ‘They’ lock you up
Write till your fingers are severed
When your ink runs dry,
Write with blood.

That’s the positive side of GLFs. Inspires people like Marlon to assemble and explode poetic bombs. The GLF has survived and is proving to be quite resilient even if oblivious to criticism — people do what they do, what they do best and what they believe is best. Let’s leave it at that.

The title of the collection, according to Marlon, was drawn from a certain politically and ideologically laden straight-jacketing pertaining to ‘proper English’ which is entwined with notions of cultural superiority that is written all over the GLF, by omission and commission. Consider, finally, the poetic explanation Marlon offers. It is hilarious as it is potent. Another bomb. This one titled ‘I is wanting to Frotezt.’
 

I is wanting to frotezt,
Againzt theeze mad men
Who appear radically
But think and live ideally 
And strain us linguistically
I is very worry
“To think that thinking men
Should think so wrongly”

Imagination is stunted
Creativity: not allowed!
We are brainwashed out of our
Vulgar un-linguistic ways
And reformed or forced to reform
To be radicals with no faze

Say special with a IS
And face with a Z
Protest with a F
And F*** with a P
Say it proudly.

So puck opp n let we be.


[Note: the asterisks were inserted by me and have nothing to do with any issue I may have with the content of the poem. As I mentioned in an earlier piece on ‘Froteztology,’ it’s just editorial necessity that is far less pernicious than the straight-jacketing the poet refers to].

Bombs. Literary bombs. GLF. Galle Fort. Sithuvili. Janaka. Marlon. Lakdasa. What a swirl! I didn’t want to write about the GLF. In fact when I thought of ‘unswirling’ the tentative title was ‘The Goal Literary Pestival,’ with the obvious nod to my highly talented and accomplished friend Marlon Ariyasinghe, but I do see some value in events such as the GLF. And yet, I felt a need not so much to throw a bomb and take notes but to capture in some way the (necessary) disruptions of a poet who threw a bomb and took his own notes.  It was a frotezt. A literary one. 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']