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Preface
- LANGAA RPCIG
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- Additional Information
iii Preface During the final stages of putting together this volume and preparing it for publication I was asked in an interview if academic writing was different from creative writing. In my view, the two forms of writing couldn’t be more different. While academic writing has to deal with a host of disciplinary and stylistic constraints, creating writing on the other hand, strives in its purest form, for unfettered expression. Some of my exact words were, “imaginative writing, for me, should strive for utter freedom of expression and hence it should confront as much as possible the shackles of censorship, both external and self-imposed. Imaginative writing should be precisely what it purports to be, which is, an act of pure imagination. Going by this understanding, it also becomes an essentially transgressive type of activity, or preferably, an act of subversion”. The present volume, A Troubadour’s Thread, emerged after a long and haphazard quest to reach poetic maturation. I had started writing as a poet and “finding one’s voice” wasn’t as easy as I had thought it would be. Although I had always struggled to arrive at, and experience, that somewhat mystical creative transformation, it didn’t often come when I had expected it or how I had anticipated it. Similar to fluctuations and rhythms associated with birth, the creation of this volume followed its own evolutionary path seemingly independent of my own often strenuous efforts. A Troubadour’s Thread emerged as a journey, a discovery as well as an arrival at an unforced evolutionary state. It is where I find myself within the least unconstrained seam of poetic expression. This state seized me at a precise moment of iv writing and continued until the verses were complete and there is, one hopes, a unity of theme, mood and tone. Sanya Osha, Pretoria, April, 2013 ...