'From da kokroach point of view, humans are irrelvant. Kokroaches no like em. Doan want em. Do not even tink bout em. Doan care for deh conversations. Books we like to eat, not read. We wish humans dead so we can eat em too. — Sizwe Bantu, The Cockroach Whisperer, 2010.
'Sizwe Bantu is the Greatest African Writer of All Time – according to Timothy Turner, failed academic and lover, who not only lives by Bantu’s words but keeps a giant rubber cockroach in homage to the writer of the renowned ‘cockroach stories’.
'Inspired to travel to Bantu country, Timothy takes up a position at a university near the place rumoured to be the reclusive writer’s residence in the misty Zululand hills. Instead of drawing closer to his source of inspiration, Timothy is drawn into a Machiavellian world of campus politics and suppressed desire.
'As Timothy grapples with the mystery surrounding Makaya, the academic he has replaced, and the demands of his students, particularly the attractive Tracey, he must confront his own paranoia, prejudice and insecurity in a search for the shocking truth.' (Publication abstract)
'Teresa Dovey once advocated that writers inhabit genres and forms and ideological positions as hermit crabs inhabit shells. In this paper, I position the writer as ‘hermit crab’ suggesting a position of displacement that is generative. From this position, a palimpsestic approach to writing can work as a liberating force, enabling an author to move between genres, forms and ideological positions, resulting in fruitful experimentation, innovation and new knowledge. As a writer of books across a range of genres, I have been inspired by J.M. Coetzee and Umberto Eco, both of whom, I propose, use this (Barthesian) atopic process to interrogate, innovate and stimulate their writing praxis.' (Publication abstract)
'A writer’s manifesto is a statement outlining a writer’s philosophy of life, writing goals and intentions, motives, and sources of inspiration. It is also an ongoing self-reflection on how a writer learns to write well. A writing manifesto demands an interrogation of the literary, political, philosophical and material contexts of a writer’s practice. This paper demonstrates how both undergraduate and post-graduate students can steer their own writing growth by writing a manifesto through an exploration of various methods of writing practice.' (Publication abstract)
'Cokcraco: A novel in ten cockroaches by Paul Williams is a clever and playful novel that resurrects Kafka's motif of the cockroach. Whereas Kafka uses the cockroach to evoke notions of isolation and disconnection, Williams' cockroaches challenge socially constructed ideological perspectives. Having worked with this soft-spoken author at the University of the Sunshine Coast, I was pleasantly surprised by Williams' evocation of such a satirical voice that is at once scathing and spirited. The voice of the cockroach, evoked through the fictional author Sizwe Bantu, repositions the notion of 'pest' onto the destructive human: 'COCKROACH: Once they [humans] colonise a territory, it can be a real challenge to eliminate them... Their love of turning pristine wildernesses into sterile concrete nests and burrows is well documented' (pg. 21). The cockroach is used to expose the gap between seemingly antithetical standpoints; creator and critic, colonised and coloniser, perception and reality. The innovation of this work resides not only in the multiplicity of the voices presented, but also the structure of the novel.' (Introduction)
'Cokcraco: A novel in ten cockroaches by Paul Williams is a clever and playful novel that resurrects Kafka's motif of the cockroach. Whereas Kafka uses the cockroach to evoke notions of isolation and disconnection, Williams' cockroaches challenge socially constructed ideological perspectives. Having worked with this soft-spoken author at the University of the Sunshine Coast, I was pleasantly surprised by Williams' evocation of such a satirical voice that is at once scathing and spirited. The voice of the cockroach, evoked through the fictional author Sizwe Bantu, repositions the notion of 'pest' onto the destructive human: 'COCKROACH: Once they [humans] colonise a territory, it can be a real challenge to eliminate them... Their love of turning pristine wildernesses into sterile concrete nests and burrows is well documented' (pg. 21). The cockroach is used to expose the gap between seemingly antithetical standpoints; creator and critic, colonised and coloniser, perception and reality. The innovation of this work resides not only in the multiplicity of the voices presented, but also the structure of the novel.' (Introduction)
'A writer’s manifesto is a statement outlining a writer’s philosophy of life, writing goals and intentions, motives, and sources of inspiration. It is also an ongoing self-reflection on how a writer learns to write well. A writing manifesto demands an interrogation of the literary, political, philosophical and material contexts of a writer’s practice. This paper demonstrates how both undergraduate and post-graduate students can steer their own writing growth by writing a manifesto through an exploration of various methods of writing practice.' (Publication abstract)
'Teresa Dovey once advocated that writers inhabit genres and forms and ideological positions as hermit crabs inhabit shells. In this paper, I position the writer as ‘hermit crab’ suggesting a position of displacement that is generative. From this position, a palimpsestic approach to writing can work as a liberating force, enabling an author to move between genres, forms and ideological positions, resulting in fruitful experimentation, innovation and new knowledge. As a writer of books across a range of genres, I have been inspired by J.M. Coetzee and Umberto Eco, both of whom, I propose, use this (Barthesian) atopic process to interrogate, innovate and stimulate their writing praxis.' (Publication abstract)
