Canadian poet and writer Margaret Atwood, in her keynote speech at the inaugural ceremony of the Jaipur literature Festival, explains the reason why literary festivals are proliferating and how words are mere black marks if there is no reader to understand them. R Sharma reports
Walking slowly towards the stage in her low voice she said, “I am either too old or really important, that is why I have been asked to give the key notes for the inaugural ceremony,” laughed the blue eyed Canadian poet and writer, Margaret Atwood.
“I am so old that this is my third time in India, and the last one was 27 years ago. Some of you were not even born that time. Imagine that!” she exclaimed wittily. “I am even older than that because I remember when the idea of literature festival first took shape in Australia in 1960s. But it has its roots even earlier in the coffee houses of early 1950s and 60s in San Francisco. That was the time when jazz musicians and poets used to perform in places that were typically condemned warehouses, which had really bad sound system. One such coffee house was in Canada, Bohemian Embassy. And people thought that it was the real embassy. Some even applied for visas there,” shared the 73-year-old making everyone laugh.
She shared that it was the first place where she read her “awful” poetry and learnt how to deal with emergencies like electric failure and drunk poets. “I don’t think poets are allowed to be drunk anymore. In those days, they were required to be drunk, if they were men. It was considered... romantic,” she said in delightful manner. While she was mentioning this, she coughed and said, “I need water. Now, it is going to be a race between my voice and speed. This is what you get for being old,” she commented.
Though she said that a lot has changed the way literature festivals are designed but the reason why such festivals are proliferating is because, “writers are cheap dates. You don’t need a perfect lighting or an orchestra. You need just writers and their words. Words that are powerful. What does the author get when he writesIJ He gets the dear reader, because words are mere black marks until a reader is reading it,” she said.
In an age where a lot of people think that reading has diminished because of the technology, the This is a photograph of me poetess said , “I think platforms for reading are changing. In a place where people have no access to libraries or other resources, they have mobiles And, it is true that if there are no readers then sooner or later, there will be no writers.”