Literary seminars back after hiatus

Tony Mochama

As I pole danced in trunks on a slow dhow in Lamu three years ago, Shalja Patel, the Kenyan – Gujarat poetess pole axed me with the words: "Really, you should be less high spirited!"

"But I’m exuberant on SLS – Summer Literary Seminars," I yelled against the wind, from my pole position on the dhow.

SLS, that’s not a new psychedelic drug on the market –– although the SLS trips can be most intoxicating. The gathering is perhaps the only literary seminar that triangulates the world. It was the brainchild of Professor Mikhail Iossel.

‘Misha’ as his friends call him is a Russian ÈmigrÈ whose incredible life –– a story for another Sunday –– has seen him end up as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Concordia, in Montreal Canada.

And it is thanks to Concordia University that the SLS program, the only literary seminar of its kind this side of the Sahara, has seen the light of this December.

In December 2007, prescience of political violence made foreigners who come from North America stay away from SLS Kenya.

Renewed curiosity

Last year, the post-election violence hangover made the event a hard sell. This year, President Barack Obama’s election renewed curiosity in the Kenya. Misha’s persistence alongside assistants Tom Burke and Mike Spry and mostly the University of Concordia’s aid, this year saw 33 Americans and Canadians attend the event.

Kenyan writers make up another 25 strong of this literary program. The forum starts with workshops and then a retreat to island floating still in time, Lamu, to recharge.

Alongside literary talks given by Dr Tom Odhiambo of University of Nairobi, award-winning photojournalist Boniface Mwangi and this writer, workshop faculty included Chinua Achebe Centre, Professor Binyavanga Wainaina and Story Moja’s Doreen Baingana.

Foremost of the ‘foreign’ poetesses teaching was Professor of English and publisher circle of Obama’s first book Dreams From My Father Toi Derricotte, who has published four works of poetry as well as the touching memoir, The Black Note Books.

And then there is the novelist Catherine Bush, whose book The Rules of Engagement was an a bestseller For the ‘Writing Kenya’ part of the SLS programme, Kwani Trust director Billy Kahora puts it best when he says: " Though material is never scarce in Kenya for a writer, it is the forms to manage what is at hand that are most confusing. What to write?"

Urban lingo

The choices are between historical narratives, contemporary urban legends and ongoing rural folktales.

There is also the formal English and national Swahili subverted by urban lingo and rural vernacular, informal, ‘informed’ estate places versus official ‘knowledgeable’ Kenya with its school system and codes of behaviour.

"These issues, among myriad others, are those that the modern Kenyan writer has to grapple with, and ‘Writing Kenya’ is about finding a way, a language, a style, to do this. There is little option, because somehow somewhere along the way, you decided to become a writer," he says.

The next SLS conferences will be held in Montreal.

 

 

 

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