Carien Smith’s story “Likkewaan” / “Leguan”” was nominated by PEN Afrikaans and then longlisted for the 2015 PEN International New Voices Award. PEN South Africa’s nominations were Genna Gardini’s poem “Performance Scale” and Liam Kruger’s short story “Sarah“.
Carien recently made the shortlist of just ten people for the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award (the two winners included South African Megan Ross).
Read our Q&A with Carien below and click through to read her story “Likkewaan” in English or Afrikaans.
Can you tell us a bit about your writing life – how long you’ve been writing for and what you enjoy writing about?
I started writing dramas for the stage in high school. I wrote and directed a play for one of the ATKV festivals in 2005, which won a number of awards, and thereafter another play in my matric year, which was long listed for the Nagtegaal text prize in 2009. I often choose to write about social issues and use magical realism or absurdism to emphasise certain aspects or to recreate the known into the unknown and to render the unreal real. Everything in the world has already been written about – every tree, flower, person or situation. The biggest challenge the writer faces is to rewrite something that has been described in so many ways, in a new, fresh way that is interesting, as well as a challenge to the reader. It is not enough to write about something in a way that does not bring a new dimension to the portrayal of that object, or character, for the reader to ponder on.
But long before high school I actually started writing stories. At age four and a half I taught myself to read and write and at five wrote a children’s story, made the book myself, did the illustrations and handed it over to my mother. In primary school I even started my own newspaper, called The Beacon Bay Boppers. I was the editor-in-chief, the only journalist, layout editor, and I sold it for R2. Later I started employing other children to be journalists. It became a booming business and saw about 3 editions before I lost interest. Around grade four I wrote a very soppy love story, called “The Legend of the Lost Kiss”. In high school I won a regional poetry competition, and I came second in a Golden Key Prose competition in 2007. In 2012 I worked for a charity magazine while living in Laos.
Could you also talk a bit about your story “Likkewaan”, which was longlisted for the PEN International New Voices Award?
I wrote “Likkewaan” (“Leguan”) for the Nuwe Stories 3-competition by Human & Rousseau Publishers. I did not really think that it stood a chance to be chosen for the publication. After it was accepted, we went through a process where we received feedback on the stories, and could improve. The other story that was also published in Nuwe Stories 3 is titled “Binnekort” (“Soon”). The editors were Suzette Kotzé-Myburgh and Leti Kleyn.
“Likkewaan” is a reflection on a possible reality for young people that finish their studies toward a career in education and end up in schools that they did not really want to go to and teach at. I use magical realism to bring in a parallel African mythological tale that reflects on the main storyline. In the mythological story God sends a message to a man through a chameleon. A lizard intercepts the message, however, and delivers a message of doom and destruction, with the goal of causing the receiver of the message pain. This mythological tale plays into the reality of the young woman that teaches at a school in the township Botshabelo.
Books or authors that have had an impact on you?
One of my favourite quotes by Aldous Huxley summarise the role of the writer, as I understand it:
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” – Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception)
Although Huxley used this quote in the context of drug use and the influence that it has on the human being’s consciousness, I would like to put it into the context of the writer, or artist.
By writing worlds onto paper, the distinction between what we know, and that which we do not know, is lifted and becomes irrelevant. Anything can exist as ink on paper, and eventually find its life in the mind of a reader. The “doors of perception” is exactly where the reader finds himself or herself. And “perception” eventually becomes “deception”. The reader purposefully allows himself to be deceived into believing an alternative reality – be it fantasy or reality – as long as the author does a good job of leading the reader into that world. This is generally the case with all art forms. The artist has to “deceive” the “audience” of their art into believing an alternative reality, although it might be related to our reality.
English literature and authors that have influenced my writing: George Orwell, Roald Dahl, Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel García Márquez, and Franz Kafka’s short fiction, Aldous Huxley’s novels, and the non-fiction work, and Albert Camus. Playwrights: Samuel Beckett, Athol Fugard and Bertolt Brecht. Afrikaans authors: A.P. Brink, Tertius Kapp, Reza de Wet, Abraham de Vries, T.T. Cloete, Deon Opperman, Jan Rabie, Etienne van Heerden, Jeanne Goosen and Riana Scheepers. Some of the philosophers, that have influenced my thinking and writing: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edward Said, Erich Fromm and Martin Heidegger.
Do you think you’ll stick with the short story format, or do you have plans for longer works?
I started writing for the theater and then I moved on to the short fiction genre, but I definitely have plans to expand my horizon and write for other genres as well. Maybe one day I might tackle a novel?
What are you working on at the moment?
My newest play “Vergeet” (“Forget”) was performed at a festival in Pretoria in September this year. This play is part of a trilogy, and the other two texts are already in the pipeline. “Vergeet” takes place on the evening of Nelson Mandela’s death, and a demented Afrikaans literature professor is faced with a new mysterious nurse who knows more about his past than is normal. History becomes relative, and the man is faced with real and imagined pasts. The evening of Mandela’s death is the link between the plays, and two of the plays of the trilogy will be a reflection on possible events that could have played out on that evening. The third play will be slightly different, rather focusing on a possible future, after Mandela’s passing.
I am also involved in a project for the Stellenbosch Word Festival 2016, which is a collaboration between writers and visual artists. Power struggles and magic, politics and the fairy tale are the dominant themes in this project, with the focus on the relationship between fairy tales and politics.
Other than the Stellenbosch Word Festival project and the new texts that are in the pipeline, I am also working on a manuscript for my debut short story collection. The collection will consist of more or less fifteen to twenty stories, with the focus on the South African reality seen through the lens of the magical and mythological.