SUBURBAN TROPICALITIES

                                                                   
It's nice to go for a walk Saturday.

From UPNG down the road to the Waigani Service Station where they sell Post Courier's Weekend Courier.

We check if Storyboard is still around. They say he is too old, he should retire, call it quits and all that. But rumor has it he still loiters around and, like a strayed beggar, finds himself, in his poetic mind, a little distance away from a Risen Master sharing baked fish with His disciples - only to shake himself awake from that blissful reverie and find himself looking at old wrecks along the Waigani Road.

Well, it's all in the plan, it seems. Someone's gonna claim insurance for that, pretty soon. But let's walk on, and there, at the Service Station, is the Weekender Courier. Is Storyboard in? Yep, talking about PNG poetry taking form and the Crocodile Literary Competitions which close on Thursday, 31st May 2012.

So HURRY! Afore you miss out. Prizes are rich, voluminous, declares Storyboard.

My 6 Olympian nominations

                                                                     
HOUSES OVER WATER

The houses of Koki stand over water

wave after wave shaping in vain

their crooked posts for straightness.

The land is city’s.

And so are the men of Koki

employed as clerks, carpenters.

The women wade out to the deep

with nets. The children fight over

empty bottles along the seawall. Overhead,

gulls turn for the coast. A boy, seized

by a flash of wings upon the sea screen,

leaps skywards, laughing and dancing.

From the cliff tops, within the sky scraping

skeletons of the city’s eye, the seas rises

breaking the houses at the market bay.

                                                                                 

AFTERNOON RAIN: CAMPUS CONSCIOUSNESS

for the nth student, Waigani Campus

rain clouds at 3 pm

greyed green absorb

matters of campus consciousness

walking neath slothed clouds

equatorial j.w. turner storms

neath concrete pillars

& erected sands

to the halls – lecture rooms

tutorial cellars – the floors

once swept by last semester’s

feet are again dank & inhabited

by frogs who caint leaves us alone...

the earth is laid flat

back aching

on the green of the now tired gods:

this is the only begotten

afternoon rain

laid bare & tropical before you

the rain’s a-drumming on sagothatched memoirs

a houseful of masks & tapa patterns

marx assignments & confessional testimonies

& mirrors that promise champagne

satin ecstasies/solitary lake

ghost city of the last graduates

BOOK-KEEPING

Man Friday listens

to the surf lapping against

the hulks of foreign vessels

mooring at the sleep of the bay

and knows

he is not in that dream.

He says:

“God forbid, no.”

And he’s on land

cracking hauga-nut shells

with patient hands and book-

keeping eyes, the gathered nuts

gleaming greenstones and abira rocks

in the sun.

He will circle the island for signs

of storms and high tides. He will

save turtles and others stranded

by an outgoing tide. He will comb

the island once more and cycle

into town, to the check the balance

of the day.

LOOKING THRU THOSE EYE-HOLES

once an artist went overseas

his father died in his absence

& was buried in the village

he followed a rainbow upon his return

& came to a cemetery

he dug in search of reality

till he broke his father’s skull

to wear its fore-half as a mask

try it/look thru those eye-holes

see the old painting/view the world

in the way the dead had done

SETTLEMENTS

A face, averted slightly

blames the tears on smoke

from burning blue gum wood

the green kindling bundled

one day, to flame up

the pot on fire. Humming

fingers scoop up sago crumbs

and the evening sets

in, firmly.

The woman by the earth

oven croon tunes

of sugar cane days

and blackbirding voyages.

They come, one after the other

over barbwire fences, and on

dancing feet, their teeth

grinning lanterns in the dark.

Flames light up the settlement.

HERE

...and us, air, in the morning
                     - Salvatore Quasimodo

Let me live in your sanctuary
                     - Psalm 61:4


   I.

We come as our own visitor

To the sanctuary

Leaves that fall

Gird the season red

Doves fly by

Past black and clawing branches

Past burnt out woods and hills

Our arrival is a song

Of a forgotten priest

Piercing the silence

Of this sanctuary

Or mounds of earth rising

The pulse of yearning rapping

Along the furrowed desolation

Of a devastated landscape

   II.

In this long-awaited high savannah

The slumbering moura is stirring

The kwamra's dreams are waking

And leaves that were written dead

Are waking deeper than the roots

That penned them. Each cotyledon

Each tentative bud, saves the day.

The earth stands still, mauve-

Colored and olive, a chalice

Before the morning sun.

   III.

The earth is the ultimate

In our song of the womb:

The final grace that is mother.

Tall. Graceful. Elegant.

She embraces and shields us

Shows us the wounds at the side

At the feet and hands, where

The world has died. We sing praises

For her great strength, for the bread

She breaks; and the living spring

We drink from the cup of her hands.

From KWAMRA: a season of harvest. Published by The Anuki Country Press, Port Moresby, 2000. 60+ pages.

ABOVE THE FRAY II

HERE

...and us, air, in the morning
                     - Salvatore Quasimodo

Let me live in your sanctuary
                     - Psalm 61:4


   I.

We come as our own visitor

To the sanctuary

Leaves that fall

Gird the season red

Doves fly by

Past black and clawing branches

Past burnt out woods and hills

Our arrival is a song

Of a forgotten priest

Piercing the silence

Of this sanctuary

Or mounds of earth rising

The pulse of yearning rapping

Along the furrowed desolation

Of a devastated landscape

   II.

In this long-awaited high savannah

The slumbering moura is stirring

The kwamra's dreams are waking

And leaves that were written dead

Are waking deeper than the roots

That penned them. Each cotyledon

Each tentative bud, saves the day.

The earth stands still, mauve-

Colored and olive, a chalice

Before the morning sun.

   III.

The earth is the ultimate

In our song of the womb:

The final grace that is mother.

Tall. Graceful. Elegant.

She embraces and shields us

Shows us the wounds at the side

At the feet and hands, where

The world has died. We sing praises

For her great strength, for the bread

She breaks; and the living spring

We drink from the cup of her hands.

From KWAMRA: a season of harvest

Two new literary discoveries

Literature students at the Waigani Campus of the University of Papua New Guinea with their first copy of Drusilla Modjeska's novel, The Mountain.

Last week and some weeks previously storyboard felt elevated by two new literary discoveries of influence in Papua New Guinea literature.

The first was the arrival, at long last, of Drusilla Modjeska’s novel, The Mountain. The second was a collection of poems by Michael Dom, entitled At another Crossroads, compiled as a manuscript and sent to storyboard for review.

Two lovely pieces of work, quite timely and represent all that we would want to know about our country through fiction and poetry.

Storyboard readers may recall a brief review of Modjeska’s The Mountain, in an article entitled The Literary Marvels of Tufi. In that article we have proclaimed the arrival of work exemplifying those done on Papua New Guinea by authors who love visiting the country and who look at our activities, literary or otherwise, with special regard. There are the Trevor Shearstons, the Phil Fitzpatricks and the Keith Jacksons, to name a few. And now Drusilla Modjeska.

Modjeska’s novel starts at the outskirts of Port Moresby, in an isolated area of sparsely distributed savannah vegetation and swamp which will later become known as the Waigani Campus of the University of Papua New Guinea.

The people who start settling in at that area consist of a remarkable collection of academics, young and old, and recruited from the finest schools in Europe and America. They are there curiously to establish a new university which many colonial old timers of the time describe as a “boi’s school.” It is this curiosity that drives a young couple Rika and Leonard to travel all the way from Oxford just to become part of that excitement of the 60s and 70s.

The result is a sweeping story that starts in Port Moresby, moves on to the mountain, which we understand now as Mt Lamington in the Oro Province. Thenceforth, the characters move back and forth in their academic preoccupation of research and study of the area, and then move south east, to the Tufi area, because two of the novel’s prominent characters come from there. There is much excitement involved and as we read our way into the core of the novel we discover a lot of things about Papua New Guinea that are at once enlightening and memorable.

The radical activities of the student politicians of the day, the intermingling of characters consisting of members of staff and their students, the type of discoveries dug up in the fields of anthropology and archaeology, and the emergence of a new literary culture –  these are well represented in the novel.

 

Somewhere in this beautiful novel we come across radical students in the likes of Milton the playwright, scoffing critic of the atmosphere that surrounds him, snorting adviser to budding politicians who will later hone, shape and mould Papua New Guinea into nationhood. But these Papua New Guinean characters often find home in the company of women like Martha, Rika and men like Don and Leonard, the brilliant visual anthropologist.

Together they shape and form the beginnings of the country’s move towards political independence from Australia. And together they live a sort of life that many will forget except this young man called Jericho, who returns from Oxford one day, to retrace through books the footsteps of those who have gone before him. And what Jericho discovers about the mountain and Papua New Guinea is truly amazing.

A regular visitor to Papua New Guinea, Drusilla Modjeska drops by at UPNG now and then to share thoughts on literature and writing with students and staff there. Her advice to the young generation of aspiring writers: “A young writer – any writer – needs courage, and also patience. Courage to write from the heart, patience to return to draft after draft.”

Michael Dom

From the Estate of Icarus storyboard is pleased to announce the arrival of Michael Dom’s At another Crossroads. This is an exciting collection of poetry that Dom has been working on for some time and now feels that it is ready for publication. A good number of these poems have previously appeared in the National newspaper’s Weekender supplement. These were well-received, making Michael Dom an interesting social and political commentator through poetry.

Storyboard first became aware of Dom’s poetry through the Crocodile Literary competition, an initiative of the competition organizers in Australia and the Post Courier. Dom is a strong supporter of the Crocodile literary workshops and competitions and his contributions to the last workshop held at the Australian High Commission on 15^th September 2011 were invaluable. Since then he has not given up the pen and the result is this fine collection of poetry whose themes range from social criticism to environmental concerns and individual thoughts and aspirations and further into the arena of poetics (meaning creative writing observed as a tool for social and political commentary).

In all, At another Crossroads is a lovely collection and storyboard looks forward to the day when all this poetry is published as a book. Here is one such poem followed by a commentary by the poet himself.

A dinghy ride by starlight

There is an echo even now. Awakening

From haunted dreams, late in the night

A memory of a dinghy ride by starlight:

The noise of the motor reverberating

Off the coast, above the rushing waves,

Cold and damp from sea spray and rain:

Phosphorescent glittering streams in

Our passing wake arise from unknown

Depths as we skim their salty matrix:

Dark ragged hills like a rip in the fabric

Of a jet black sky and the ghostly white

Foam of the relentless Solomon Sea:

A shoreline strewn with the debris of

That unending war: A warning to steer

Clear off, but to keep a parallel course:

Speak not of crows for I have seen them

In a mist shrouded morning at Rabaraba

Where they held their nodding congress

And Champion’s surprise at finding me

There upon his arrival was worth a

Hundred voyages into the Anuki Country

Michael Dom

Bubia Station, 04:31AM 21/01/2012

Champion Ando was the name of my traveling partner, whom I was supposed to meet at Alotau. When I arrived there around ten o' clock he had already left early in the morning. I took a bus from Masurina Lodge, went down to town, asked the locals there for a highway truck, got on and made my way around the coast to a dinghy place on the north coast, Awaiama. That's where my dinghy ride began.

Until that time I had never been to Milne Bay in my life. Champion had no idea where I was, and everyone else thought that I was still in Port Moresby.

You can imagine his surprise when he comes to shore at Rabaraba at six o' clock the next morning, to be greeted by myself, standing on the shore, waving to him. He thought for sure I was a ghost (or bewitched). He had some difficulty speaking for a little bit, when I asked him what had taken him so long to get there. It will make a good short story some day.

Michael

                                                            

A dream gone with the wind

A man and his wife, along with their three children, who had spent 13 years building a home at Tubusereia village would see all that dream shattered by a whirlwind in a matter of seconds early this year.

The exact time and date of that calamity was recorded as 9.00pm, Friday 3^rd February 2012.

It strikes us as sad yet fascinating that such a mishap should befall a family in February, a time of year when the planting season is over and when a subsistence family gets settled down to waiting for the gardens to mature. In a way, February is a month of rest for most traditional settings and family units.

But for a thing like this to happen to a man and his family after 13 years of toil and sweat leaves us wondering if it is nature that has strayed from us or us deviating from proper respect and reverence for it.

Haraga A. Sibona had those thoughts in mind when he visited storyboard last week. He wanted the story of this Tubusereia family to be shared by other Papua New Guineans.

The family in question is Mr Malaga Rei’s, a bese along the Dere shoreline of Tubusereia.

Mr Malaga Rei is 57 years old, and with a quietly spoken wife has three children: two adult males namely Odi and Edea and a teenage daughter.

Mr Rei currently works as part of the auxiliary staff of the Port Moresby General Hospital and one can imagine the anxiety that besets most working men his age in Papua New Guinea, especially upon the verge of retirement. Something must be done by way of home and security for family before the nominal age catches up. Hence, the hard work put in by the Rei family over a 13 year period.

But all that effort would go with the wind, as it were, within seconds.

There was something mysterious about the formation of the wind that came swooping in to Tubusereia, mused Haraga Sibona in a passionate mixture of Motu and English narrative.

“It was believed to be a whirlwind,” he said, “that was seen just off shore Taurama Bay, approaching the inner waters of the Bootless Bay and towards the village. According to the villagers there was an unfamiliar stretch of darkness conforming with the features of that oncoming imminent storm. In the midst of this scenario was a faded white image of the whirlwind moving and circling like a disc as it headed towards the village.”

“The wind struck the southern end of the village at about 9 o’clock pm,” continued Haraga Sibona, “blowing down the Rei family house in seconds. The verandah and roofing parts of four other homes within the Dere and Ikanaia beach and shores were simultaneously damaged. In the darkness there were sounds of corrugated iron roofing and timber smashing and ripping apart from the Rei family house. Household materials and items went crashing in the sea or tossed on the shore banks and the hillside. Windows, roofing and wall frames were thrown in the air like pieces of paper over the tops of neighbouring houses. Two power poles were bent, one damaging the timber walkway leading the Rei family house and the other causing partial damaged to a house next door. The aftermath the next morning was a scene of debris littering the beaches of Dere and Ikanaia.”

“Mr Malaga Rei, known to his folks as a humble man who greets fellow villagers with a smile, was thoroughly shaken by this tragedy. On that early Saturday morning he sat in silence on a pile of belongings he has gathered with tears in his eyes. He felt devastated loosing what he termed as his only valuable family asset. Otherwise he was at a loss for words to describe his ordeal which was the first of its kind for him in all his lifetime. His beloved and quiet spoken wife was speechless but gave a wry smile to those who came by to offer comfort.”

At this point Haraga Sibona paused as if searching for words, but continued.

“Mr Rei tried to relay his feelings of how both he and his wife watched their children grow up without any kind of trouble like this one. They built the house successfully; they brought PNG Power to it to light it up. And then tragedy struck. He and his wife were the only ones in the house when that happened. A regular congregation member of the local church he commends the God almighty’s protection for him and his wife’s safety. Their two sons, the second of whom is a father of two children were in the city when the wind struck. Their only teenage daughter was with the other family next door. That family too was hit by the wind causing damage to the roofing parts of their house, but they were all able to escape unhurt.”

As Haraga Sibona completed this story of the Rei family storyboard asked what was being done at this time for the family to rebuild. An appeal was launched, explained Sibona, at the Tubusereia United Church for a general pledge of donations in cash and kind towards the Rei family in their time of despair. The Rei boys, Odi and Edea, have already pledged their intention to rebuild at the same site and are doing what they can to raise the funds. But we hope to spread this story far and wide for those who might want to share these silent thoughts with us and help if they can.  

  Published in the Post Courier’s Weekend Courier, Saturday 7^th April, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Haraga A. Sibona.