Israel bars Gunter Grass over his Poem

Gunter Grass, the 1999 Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature, has been barred by Israel for openly claiming that Israel is a 'threat to the world peace' in one of his poems 'What Must Be Said'. In the ripe old age of 84, Gunter Grass, an author, playwright and sculptor, has courted a huge controversy and the issue of claiming that "nuclear-armed Israel is endangering already fragile world peace" has generated a lot of heat. The poem 'What Must Be Said' has been published in the German newspaper, 'Süddeutsche Zeitung'. A lot of hue and cry has been raised in Israel as well as in Germany, as both Left and Right-wing politicians support Israel because of various historical reasons. Iran has very happily welcomed Grass' poem. The poet has a few other supporters too. Klaus Staeck, the president of the Berlin academy of art, defended Grass saying, “It's got to be possible to speak openly without being denounced as an enemy of Israel”. He stated that Mr. Grass was just giving vent to his feelings and worries about the developments in Middle East. Now what we have here is a nice amalgam of literature, politics and the question artistic freedom! Let's see how things turn out to be. To keep an eye on the turn of events, maintain track of Literary Jewels More discussions will follow. There are many questions raised, but they can only be answered after a bit of pondering over the matter. Keep your thoughts and reactions flowing in...

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Adrienne Rich, award-winning feminist poet dies at 82

Adrienne Rich (1929 - 2012

 The news of death of Adrienne Rich, an American poet, essayist and feminist, pulled be back to a reading of her works. As I have always said, rather than discussing a writer's biographic facts in detail (which are available at any website or book), it is more important to discuss his/her literary writings. This especially behoves a literary website like Literary Jewels

She died on 27 March, 2012.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control

A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreaths.

A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.


NOTE: Submit your viewpoints about the poem. Let's start a literary discussion...Keep watching this space for more insights into this writing and much more...

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Man Asian Literary Prize Winner 2011

South Korean novelist, Kyung-sook Shin became the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize, Asia’s most prestigious award for writers, for her novel ‘Please Look After Mom’. She received the amount of US$30,000 at the black tie dinner at The Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong. The translator of the novel is Chi-Young Kim. He also received a sum of US$5,000. This prize is the first for a South Korean writer.

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Man Asian Literary Prize Dinner Event

The winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize 2011 will be announced on 15 March, 2012. Razia Iqbal is the Chair Judge. The other judges are, Vikas Swarup, the author of 'Q&A', the book on which the movie 'Slumdog Millionaire' was based; Chang-rae Lee, a Pulitzer-prize finalist who authored 'The Surrendered'.

The 2011 Shortlist is as follows:

JAMIL AHMAD, Pakistan - The Wandering Falcon
JAHNAVI BARUA, India - Rebirth
RAHUL BHATTACHARYA, India - The Sly Company of People Who Care
AMITAV GHOSH, India - River of Smoke
KYUNG-SOOK SHIN, South Korea - Please Look After Mom
YAN LIANKE, China - Dream of Ding Village
BANANA YOSHIMOTO, Japan - The Lake

A dinner event has been organized with the seven finalists by the Hong Kong Literary Festival in association with Man Asian Literary Prize. The tickets for the event to be held on 14 March, 2012 have already been sold out. Each ticket costs 600 Hong Kong dollars. There will be a book signing session at the end of the event.
The 'Sold Out' tag might have put off some of the prospective participants. Now all they can do is wait for the fifteenth for the final announcement. Keep watching this space for the declaration of the result! Till then....Happy Reading!

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