Texting, the future of modern poetry

Defending the use of text messages by young people, a poet laureate has claimed that texting is the future of modern poetry.

Carol Ann Duffy claimed the language of 'txt spk' lent itself to a new generation of young bards.

"The poem is a form of texting. It's the original text," the Daily Mail quoted the 55-year-old poet as saying.

"It's a perfecting of a feeling in language. It's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is.

We've got to realise that the Facebook generation is the future, and, oddly enough, poetry is the perfect form for them. It's a kind of time capsule - it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form.

Full report here Times of India

Vicious Facebook campaign hijacks J-K litfest

Jammu & Kashmir’s first All-India Literature Festival, scheduled for September, has been put off indefinitely. The decision followed a vicious campaign on Facebook describing the Litfest as ‘Indian propaganda’ and calling upon the people to disrupt the festival by throwing stones.

The organisers’ plans to keep the festival ‘apolitical’ boomeranged, because some elements in the valley saw it as a ‘government agenda’ to tom tom normalcy in the Valley. The political campaign was spearheaded by a couple of Kashmiri writers settled abroad.

Ironically, New York based author Basharat Peer (author of Curfewed Night) and London based Mirza Waheed (author of The Collaborator), both of whom declined to attend the festival on the ground that their writing is political, have received acclaim in various literature festivals including the one in Jaipur.

“It is bizarre; first a national daily claiming to be the ‘masthead of India’ erroneously reported that Salman Rushdie will be attending the festival, then writers like Mirza and Basharat denounced the festival,” exclaimed one of the organisers on Tuesday.

Full report here Tribune 

Penguin India launches mobile application

Leading book publisher, Penguin Books India has launched a mobile application that offers information of all books by the penguin Books India.

The new mobile app supports iPhone and Nokia Symbian devices. With the new application, users can read reviews, browse author's name, latest books, download books available at Penguin Book India.

The new mobile application can connect the user with other book lovers in the "Stay Connected' section which redirects to the Penguin India, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages.

In the "Stay Connect" section, users can suggest, recommend, watch video, discuss books in the Penguin India on Facebook, You Tube and Twitter pages.

Full report here Art & Design

Books in the age of Facebook

I am in awe of the power of the written word; and my first exposure to the written word was in books. My father and the Catholic priests of my boarding school taught me to love books. The school library was a sanctuary. I travelled the world in books. In places like India and London, I found boys that behaved like me. I immersed myself in cultures that would have been alien without the powerful pull of books. I will never forget my first visit to London. I kept seeing places that had appeared to me before in books. As a precocious boy, the only way to keep me still was to hand me a book.

The world has changed from my childhood days. These days when I am reading a book, I resist the urge to click on a word; I see the Internet anywhere. Technology has radically redefined how I access ideas. I am not a fan of electronic readers like the spindle. I view them as inchoate and primitive. However, I believe that the iPad and its subsequent reincarnations are going to spell the end of the book. In the West, the library as we know it is preparing to go on life support; actually it is already dead and now they call the reincarnation a media centre. My daughter does not understand why we built a library in our community. She says the books should all fit in a laptop. Think about how children now live and it will give you digital pause. It is true that the book is not going away anytime soon but it is dying. There are opportunities for writers and thinkers to sell their ideas on the new formats especially in the ubiquitous smartphones of Africa. People might just read us if we put our thoughts on a Nokia. Now, that’s a brilliant thought.

Full report here Next

A book written by its readers?

Random experiences and impressions of people growing up in urban India compiled into a book is not something new. But, what if the book is yet-to-be written and the debutante author leans on fans of a social networking site for content?

Techie Karthik Iyengar hopes to set a new trend in publishing when he embarks on a 40-day road journey from Kanyakumari to Leh-Ladakh, interacting with fans of his Facebook community along the way and including their experiences in his upcoming book Horn Ok Please.

"We have launched the first ever reality show on Facebook, capturing the spirit of India, young India.'HoP'pers are going to guide us at all our destinations," Iyengar who calls the over 9000 fans of his community as 'HoPpers' after the book, told reporters.

"We plan to meet them at the cities where we go, take their inputs on growing up in urban India and so, the last two chapters of my book will be bearing names of those HoPpers them who really inspired me are different or made a difference in my work," he says.

Full report here Economic Times