A Suva poet has embarked on a journey to help local aspiring writers express themselves better and with more creativity.

Pita Sipeli, 40, says while Fiji’s society is visually intelligent, emotionally it has become very poor. And, he believes deep reading and writing can remedy this problem.

“People are using memes, pictures and emojis to express emotions which is not deep and can’t truly be expressive,” Mr Sipeli said.

He began this year with one student but is hoping to expand and include both adults and kids alike in his classes.

Another aim of his is to help people express “true human emotion” through writing.

He also says people looking to pursue literary art as a profession should be nurtured.

“Support in all its forms – education needs to have systems to better reward teachers so they can create better programmes to identify and nuture young writers and thinkers,” he says.

“Government needs to provide tertiary training to engender writers and provide the fertile ground for publishers to create opportunities for writers to become published.”

He said the books needed to be more affordable and accessible in the country.

“We need more bookshops and books needs to be affordable so people can access it. We need to have national writing programmes and competitions,” Mr Sipeli said.

“Parents and care givers need to think of books as little portals of information that build children and people’s thinking and imagination.”

Edited by George Kulamaiwasa

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