Social networks a challenge to reading and writing - 3rd James and Shobha Mendonca Endowment Lecture

Social networks a challenge to reading and writing - 3rd James and Shobha Mendonca Endowment Lecture

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangalore, July 13, 2014:  Delivering the third - James and Shobha Mendonca Endowment Lecture on Poetry - 2014, organised by Kavita Trust at SDM PG Centre for Management Studies Saturday July 12.  “Greatest works of poetry are published by poets themselves,” said Mumbai based poet and novelist Jerry Pinto.

 

 

 

 

 

Self-publishing poetry books is the primary feature of Indian poetry. This is due to the lack of readers interested in reading poetry and publishing houses not ready to publish poems. The poets in India are typecast as having no money to eke out their living and majority of the poets  tend to engage in other occupations for their livelihood, Pinto said.  He was Talking about ‘What work does the poet do,’ a question that is most often faced by poets, Jerry Pinto admitted that the general idea is that poetry does not help poet to make money, rather the poet tends to lose money  holds true. He said, however, the fact that poetry is the primal literature and all other art forms emerged out of poetry should not be forgotten.

Poetry makes a human :  “Poetry is not the white noise of humanity, but it makes one human. Explaining poetry is not an excess, but it begins the process of humanity. Poem emerges out of a need and an urge to write. It is the compilation of those few thoughts that retain in the mind of the poet and take the form of words,” he noted.  Expressing concern over the lack of reading habit among the younger generation, the poet said that the role of poetry or for that matter literature in the society keeps changing.

Responsibility has shifted from poets to the journalists. Reading habits are changing. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are posing a challenge to the poetry.  “Democratisation is where the threat is. It is not only because one spends excess time on social networking sites than books, but also because everybody tends to write on FB and Twitter and one’s popularity is measured by the ‘likes’ and comments one has received. With this trend, the life span of books is only 250 years from now expectedly,” Jerry Pinto speculated.