Saturday, 7 September 2013 00:00
-
- {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By David Ebert
The National Peace Council recently launched a collection of poetry, memoirs and fiction published in a collection and titled ‘Write to Reconcile: An Anthology’. The book was launched at a simple event held at the 80 Club, Colombo and featured readings and speeches delivered by a selection of the writers about their works and their experiences working on the project.
Write to Reconcile is what you get when you take 24 young men and women, all aspiring writers, spanning each and every culture and social background in Sri Lanka, and get them to take both an individual and collective look at the issues of conflict, peace, reconciliation, trauma and memory, not only through their own eyes, but for just one moment to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
That done you take them out of their comfort zones, help them experience the places and the people that they have often only in the times of conflict and allow them to build up their own thoughts and conclusions and then to creatively express it.
Chosen thorough submissions of their own written content accompanied by a letter where they state their reasons for wanting to be chosen, the 24 aspiring young writers were taken through two residential creative writing workshops conducted by renowned authors Shyam Selvadurai and Nayomi Munaweera both in Colombo and Jaffna, as well as special online forums where they were given the opportunity to interact with individuals possessing a wide mix of views, beliefs and experiences.
The project is about giving individuals the skills to objectively view any of the social issues prevalent in our society today and to not only form an unbiased and informed opinion, but to also express it creatively and clearly. This leads to a greater acceptance and understanding of the need for reconciliation in the country, how to recognise the signs of mistakes that may possibly be made once again and to then stand against it as a collective of like minded people.
As Write to Reconcile Project Director Shyam Selvdaurai stated in his introduction: “Good creative writing creates empathy and a broadening of perspective and tolerance. In Sri Lanka, creative writing represents an opportunity to build bridges between its various communities. Because of the polarised situation that existed during the war and unfortunately continues to exist post-war, each community has come up with its own fixed narrative of the conflict and its place (always the victim) within it.”
This leaves no room he adds, for acceptance of the “mixing and blending” that has occurred between the various communities of this country and the interactions themselves that have shaped and defined who we are today.
The resulting works span a wide range of themes such as loss, love, memory, fear and belonging but most importantly peace and reconciliation. Through the eyes of writers from the South and the North of the island you take a journey through the whole spectrum of feelings and emotions; some fiction, some truer than you think. Reading through the book introduces you to unfamiliar landscapes that are not only made both beautiful and nostalgic through the words of the individual writers, but memories once experienced, would make you wish them to not have to live through again.
The Write to Reconcile anthology was the brainchild of renowned author and Project Director Shyam Selvadurai, assisted by award winning Sri Lankan-American author Nayomi Munaweera along with the support of the National Peace Council and the Embassies of the United States and Norway.
Two thousand copies of the anthology are to be mailed to selected schools and libraries throughout the country. In addition, an electronic version of the book will be made available as a free download at the project’s website – www.writetoreconcile.com – from 4 September onwards. The project will continue next year as well and will look at including writers from the Eastern Province as well. Aspiring applicants can email [email protected] and request to be added to the list.
Pix by Sameera Wijesinghe
