WE have experienced the good fortune of seeing the Simbu Writers Association step up to organise what will be a very fine Crocodile Prize awards event in Kundiawa next month.
I trust that some of our readers will be able to make it to the Simbu for the weekend of 18-20 September to participate in what will be a joyful and important occasion.
For some years now, it has been the desire of Phil Fitzpatrick and I to see the Crocodile Prize Organisation, COG, which administers the awards, transfer its activities to PNG.
We tried to do this in 2012, but failed. And, when Phil and I rescued the project late that year, I foreshadowed that 2015 would probably see me out.
Since then Phil has also indicated that this year brings down the curtain on the enormous amount of time he is devoting to Prize activities, although he has said he will continue to assist Papua New Guinean writers publish the increasing number of books emerging from Melanesia.
While the Prize itself has been a huge success for most of its five years, the real challenge always lay in whether it would build enough momentum and expertise to become sustainable as a PNG-run enterprise.
Unfortunately, Phil and I have been unsuccessful in transferring enough of the work to PNG to ease the burden on ourselves. Apart from the success story of SWA, there has been no effort made elsewhere in PNG to demonstrate the will and ability that would maintain the Prize.
In short, outside Simbu, there has been no Papua New Guinean take-up of project management. So it seems that, at present, the Prize is unsustainable within PNG and, from our point of view, it is not realistic for its organisation to continue to be driven from Australia.
I was seeking three indicators that might keep me engaged for one more year. I had expected that writers’ groups would be established in 3-5 other cities or provinces (there were promises of this, each unrequited).
I was hoping to see energetic signs of productive engagement by more COG members with PNG media, companies and politicians to generate broader support for the Prize.
And I believed the annual awards event should be a PNG affair.
Thanks to SWA, number three got up – but not the others.
For much of this year, I have pursued alternative management and financing arrangements, including an approach at a high level of PNG’s political firmament which, despite positive early indications, saw no traction.
And I will forego further mention of the surly silence of the Australian High Commission under its most recent prematurely-departed leader or the going to ground of the well-endowed Buk bilong Pikinini which showed such enthusiasm a year ago and which has subsequently tracked the High Commission into obscurity.
It isn’t finance that’s the main problem – we have terrific sponsors and K120,000 is budget enough – it’s commitment.
Phil and I hope the Prize will be an offer next year, and that PNG COG members and other supporters will find a way to maintain it – to find the time – as a going national concern.
How to achieve this should be a major topic for discussion next month in Kundiawa.
But, for me, I know that, after five years, I need to take a big step away. My commitment to Papua New Guinea is great, but not inexhaustible. And there are other matters in my life I must attend to.
It will be a great shame if this resurgence of creative writing in Papua New Guinea fades away as did the first flowering in the late 1970s.
It’s up to Papua New Guineans to show they value their own literature and are willing to struggle hard to promote it.
I’ve enjoyed most of the last five years and have been thrilled by the successful participation in the Prize of so many writers and supporters of PNG literature.
But I think the time has come to say ‘it’s your turn’.