Category Literature

AN INTERVIEW OF YOUNG ACHIEVER PRIYANKHA KAMALAKANNAN (AUTHOR OF THE BOOKS “THE POSITIVE POETRY CLOSET’ AND “FANTASIA ADVENTURES”)

This young author of the books “The Positive Poetry Closet’ and “Fantasia Adventures” used the lockdown to hone her writing skills. She’s also been a TEDx speaker. Priyankha Kamalakannan, living in Germany. She speaks about her journey.

How did your journey as an author start?

Writing started as a skill at school. One day, I randomly wrote a short story called The Bucket List Detectives’. My parents printed it as small booklets on my eighth birthday, and gave them as return gifts to guests. Everyone loved the story, and I was motivated by the appreciation I received. So, I wrote another story called ‘Liana’s Adventures In Wonderland. During the lockdown, I re-read my previous works and realised I could write them in a much better way. So I rewrote ‘Liana’s Adventures In Wonderland’, which turned into a newly sculpted tale very different from the original story. Rewriting this story resulted in my first book, ‘Fantasia Adventures.

Tell us about ‘Fantasia Adventures’ and ‘The Positive Poetry Closet?

‘Fantasia Adventures’ is a fantasy book, where the main character is a girl called Lizzy who lives on an English farm and is very special to her grandmother. One night, when she thinks about her grandma, she magically lands in a place called Fantasia, a magical land where she meets a lot of different people. She learns about an evil queen who wants to destroy all the good. She, hence, decides to go on a mission to stop the evil queen and save Fantasia and its people. This is the plot of the story, and I sought help from my friend and added illustrations to make the book more interesting for readers.

My second book is The Positive Poetry Closet. I had numerous poems written and piled up, so I thought of compiling them into a book. I gave the book a fun title and published it.

How was your experience as a TEDx speaker?

When I was in Class III, my teachers used to play TED Talks on the smart board. When I was in Class IV, my school got a licence to conduct a TEDx speech, and my teacher allowed us to participate in it. Only a couple of people were selected, and I was surprised and happy that I was one of them. We had mentors and teachers who supported us, and to make it more impactful, we took instances from real-life for our talks. Not having notes and memorising the speech I wrote was what was keeping me from being distracted. The whole experience was thrilling.

How do you manage school and other work?

My writing started over the lockdown period, so most of my school work was done online during class. Our teachers didn’t give us much work due to which there was a lot of leisure time, which I utilised for writing my books. Our school has a system where they don’t give homework till Class VI, which made it simpler for me. Apart from the time I spend on my school work and writing. I take part in extra-curricular activities too. I also started my YouTube channel during this lockdown, where I shared videos of me spending time with my friends, doing crafts, experiments, baking, etc.

If something has to be changed in society, what would it be?

Irrespective of all the work we should accomplish, we must prioritise what we want to do and what we believe is important to us. It is also important that we spend quality time on the things we are passionate about, as it is important to share our abilities with everyone. In society, I wish to change the pivotal situation of how people are not being able to pursue their dreams and passion due to age boundaries. I would like to break these boundaries that are an obstacle to people from reaching their full potential. Many people of young and old age have been proving that age is just a number and that age shouldn’t be used to question one’s ability.

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WHAT IS FOUND POETRY?

Found poems are simply the literary equivalent of a collage. Created by assembling borrowed text from published newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, letters, speeches, poems, and sometimes even documents like tax forms or medical reports, this poetry recycles words by giving them a new meaning and context.

This mode of writing not only makes poetry accessible but also gives a fresh insight into evocative writing.

The origin story

According to the former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, the cento (Latin for patchwork) which belongs to the third Century, may have been the original found poem.

A cento-poet often refashioned lines from the works of various revered writers like Homer and Virgil to create a unique verse. The Greeks and Roman assembled centos to pay homage to the literary idols of the past.

Types of Found Poetry

Found poetry can be further classified into blackout poetry, erasure poetry, and cut-up poetry.

Blackout poetry is created by blacking out or blotting certain lines and phrases of an existing article, short story or poem using a pen or a black marker to reinterpret the original work. Contrary to this, erasure poems are created by erasing, clipping out. or obscuring certain lines or words of a printed text using a light coat of white paint.

Cut-up or Remix poetry is curated by literally cutting out words from source materials and rearranging them to create a unique meaning.

A strong proponent of the cut-up approach, American writer William S. Burroughs once said “All writing is in fact, cut-ups. A collage of words read, heard and overheard. What else?”

Found poetry rose to prominence in the 20th century due to its shared similarities with the pop art of artists like Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. It combined literature and visual art to represent the plurality of language.

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WHAT IS THE LOST GENERATION IN LITERATURE?

World War I, or the Great War (1914-1918), fractured the American worldview in ways that were beyond imagination. Many young Americans were in a state of shock after having witnessed death and destruction on such an unparalleled scale. The country that they once knew, as a safe haven built on tenets such as patriotism, faith, and morality (prior to the war) had fallen. All that remained was the population that felt lost, hopeless, scattered and at odds with the old norms of the society.

These sentiments pervaded many cultural aspects of change in the 1920s, including literature. Writers could no longer relate to the subject matter or the themes of the texts produced before the war. Although the term Lost Generation’ was introduced by Gertrude Stein, a modernist American writer who made Paris her permanent home, it only gained popularity after Emest Hemingway included it in the epigraph of his novel The Sun Also Rises (published in 1926).

As the story goes, Stein came upon the term when an auto mechanic upset with his young employee’s unsatisfactory work on her car, referred to the nation’s youth as a lost generation, difficult to prepare for work or focus

The Lost Generation, therefore, referred to that group of men and women who came of age during the First World War and felt disillusioned in the unfamiliar post-war world.

In literature, the Lost Generation was a group of American writers, most of whom immigrated to Europe and worked there from the end of World War I until the Great Depression.

A bohemian lifestyle of travel among intellectuals felt more appealing than remaining in a place where virtuous behaviour no longer existed, faith in religion was broken, and a connection to morality was questionable at best. So, the expatriate writers living in Europe wrote about the trials and tribulations of this Lost Generation, while, being a part of it themselves.

The most famous writers of the Lost Generation include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, and T.S. Eliot.

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