This interview is from the online archive,
Beyond the
Gurkhas, recordings of personal memories of Nepalese in the UK.
The interview is unedited, and we apologise for any minor technical faults. We thank all interviewees, participants and volunteers who have made this collection a possibility. Recorded during the
Brigade of Gurkhas 200th anniversary of service to the
British Crown.
Beyond the Gurkhas has been funded by the
Heritage Lottery Fund with support from
Thurrock Council, Junkiri Initiatives,
SOAS,
Centre for
Migration and
Diaspora studies, and
Essex Cultural Diversity Project.
Gopi Sapkota is a 42 years old playwright and poet who came to UK in 2008. He started writing at a very early age and has published 8 books until now. For his upcoming project, he is working on a travelogue in diaspora issue.
Generally Nepalese writers have to rely on
Nepali publishers to get their books out but it’s important for our generation to get themselves out and allow them to think outside the box.
It’s important that Nepalese writers have to integrate with international writers’ communities and to be able to work with them in order to generate ideas and to move forward otherwise we will always be relying on closed group and won’t flourish as a writer.
“
Nepalese literature is growing now in terms of quality and quantity, but now is the time we need to bring Nepalese writing to international level so that peole of the world they can read us.
Within Nepal there are some great books written which need recognition outside Nepal as well
. “
“In the UK whoever is writing are trying to incorporate different issues they have experienced here whether in the form of poems, stories, essays, travelogues etc. so I think our new generations can see those documents in coming days to see through what kind of lives we live.
Whatever the writers are writing here in the UK at present will be the good example of reflection of present society. “
“I use to do journalism back in Nepal before coming here and it was difficult the to earn the bread doing journalism then I moved to
Kathmandu I was more into theatre and it was difficult to earn money in the sense of sustaining ourselves and now I am the UK and it is difficult here as well to make your living being a writer or poet. So sometimes I think wherever
I go whether Gaidakot or Kathmandu or even UK I am living in similar sort of situation.”
“
World literature is the representation of literature of different countries although it has been perceived that
English literature as world literature but in my view world literature is literature that is written in any language which are also popular outside their language and is translated in different languages.”
“Comparing world literature with Nepalese literature we have very good books in Nepal like
Muna Madan by
Laxmi Prasad Devkota or
Pagal Basti by Sarva Bhakta, which need to be translated for getting them recognized in international context. If we translate and market can market them in international market then probably we will have better profile in international literature but sadly nobody is ready to take that kind of responsibility. We need to establish some kind of mechanism to execute like
Nepal Academy?, some of the works has been done by the academy but still there is much more to do.”
“As our next generation is all educated in
English medium and are struggling to read and write in Nepalese, the great challenge for us is to either translate books in
English so that they can understand Nepalese stories or teach them
Nepalese language in parallel.”
“Old generations are usually traditional and conventional where as new generations are always innovative, integrative and open, that’s the generation trend of generations.
We can neither blame any of them, but for me I think we should act according to time to be able to integrate with UK community otherwise we will be isolated.”
Produced by
FIPA.
- published: 08 Mar 2016
- views: 18