GLF 2010: CAFE TALK WITH GEOFF

Four years on, what can you say about the Galle Literary Festival?

It’s doing very well. I’m very happy with the way its going.

Well, this year’s Festival has no big names such as Germaine Greer, or Vidal ..whom you had before...

Festivals are not all about bringing in big names. We do have Ian Rankin, Anthony Beevor, etc.
Sometimes people say they’ll come and then they say they can’t come.
In a certain sense, we’ve been very lucky in the last three years in attracting some names. These sessions today, their quality if anything, is higher.
When we have unknown writers, people go away saying ‘oh we must read them’ .
Having known writers the whole time, people have read them... and perhaps they don’t learn as much...

How about the Booker winners? Was there no attempt to invite Arvind Adiga?

Arvind said he would come and then he wouldn’t come. I’m sure one year he will come.
Not this year!

What can you say about the crowds that are coming?

We’ll get about 4,000 this year. Last year we had about 3000.I don’t want to have a huge festival like other big festivals.

Michael Morpurgo who was a participant last time said it was the most companionable of all Literary Festivals.
Michael said that.

I’m sure we’ll get some similar quotations from writers this year

What about the criticism that when you discuss so many topics it’s not literature anymore?

We take a very broad form definition of the word literature. As long as it’s original work, I think that’s the main thing.
Literature covers many forms of expression.

That’s what I meant. The session on lighthouses is completely out of the scope of literature.

I think it’s educational.
One of our main aims is to educate people and get them thinking about things they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, whether that is whales or Paris after the liberation...

I noticed that everything, paper boxes, plastic etc., goes in one bin. There’s no separation of trash.

That’s a good point.
Most people just leave everything everywhere and volunteers have to pick things up. But that’s a very good point. I’ll make sure that tomorrow we separate (the trash).

Have you ever tried comparing this to other Festivals?

I don’t think I have compared but we have talked to other Literary Festivals. We work very closely with Bali, Shanghai, Trade Writers, etc...
They say this one writer is very good, you should try and get this writer next year and so on...
I don’t want to be as accessible as Hay or Cheltenham. They are very huge. Equally we don’t get any state funding, so we have to make the festival pay, which is very unusual.
Usually there’ll be an Arts Council, which will give you a grant, a Municipal Council which will give you a grant etc.
We do receive some funding from the Tourist Board. Apart from that we get no state funding. It costs quite a lot to put on these festivals. We rely on the generosity of our sponsors, hotels, Sri Lankan Airlines, newspapers which give us free space etc.

How would you describe it?

I would describe it as very accessible.
That’s the character I want it to be, I want them to sit around the cafe and talk to writers.
I want them to walk around the fort and see what it has to offer.
With a sense of history and architecture that lends itself to the Festival... that is what the writers like a lot about it...

Do you feel that over the time there’ll be a certain sameness to the Festival...what would you do to shake it up?

We have a policy of not inviting writers back for at least two years. With different writers there’s obviously a different feel to the Festival.
Obviously the locations aren’t the same.
Unlike the last time we used the Maritime Museum.
This year we are also putting on two free events in the fort square. One is a drumming session and the other is a dancing session. Those are completely free, there’s no charge. That’s something new.
Again that’s not literary. We hope that’s educational. We hope that it’ll show Sri Lanka in a light that people will come here...

When you say you don’t repeat writers does this apply to Sri Lankan writers as well?

Basically yes. David Blacker hasn’t been here for 3 years. Carl Muller...
Ameena Hussein?
Ameena Hussein is on our committee and so is Ashok Ferrey. But they’re quite low key. As for Ameena, though she was there one session, she’s mostly working as a moderator.
There’s no hard and fast rule about not inviting.
But I think to a certain extent festival goers feel that they have been short changed if we have the same writers year after year. We try not to do that. At the moment we’ve got about 50 writers. We try and bring about 25 international writers and 25 Sri Lankan writers.

Are there really 25 Sri Lankan writers?

Yeah.

In the context of what you are doing here, how would you respond to the contention by some that Geoffrey Dobbs wants to fill his hotels, and that’s what Galle Literary Festival is all about?

My hotels are so mickey-mouse that to sell 11 rooms is not a big deal.
I give away 10% of my rooms, so 2 out of 11 rooms that is. In some ways it’s a loss. If I weren’t hosting the Festival, my hotels would be full of paying guests. But I don’t mind doing that as I see the festival as something of a point-of-destination marketing for Sri Lanka. During the conflict the festival always provided a good story for Sri Lanka. I’ve just been interviewed by German radio, and they said it was nice to see something apolitical ...after the politics of the elections.

The Sri Lankan writing that is showcased is not the real thing.

The general criticism is that the Festival only has English writers.
Ok, first this is an English literary festival.
So I’m all for somebody having a festival that features Sinhala writers. I’m not qualified to do that.

But you do have Tamil writers, T. Sajithran for instance who writes in Tamil. So how do you explain that? It may open you to criticism that you can showcase Tamil writing but not Sinhala for some reason.

People shouldn’t think like that.
Certainly there’s no intention to exclude anyone. I wouldn’t want to do that.

Then how is it that you have Sajitharan but not one Sinhala writer?

Who would you like me to invite?

Monica Ruwanpathirana. Oh, I think she died.

If somebody came up to me and said they want to organise a parallel Festival that featured only Sinhala writers I would be a supporter of that.
But I’m not qualified to do that.

Another accusation is that ticket prices are too expensive.

It’s odd that it’s the lunches that sell out first.
And actually by charging high prices for lunches we can subsidise students and teachers..

That maybe correct, but the tickets are still priced high by Sri Lankan standards. My colleague said this is rather pretentious.

Of course it’s the perspective. There’s good things going on. This year we have a lot more free events.
We’re not in this to make a profit.
We’re in it to encourage reading.
And of course we want more tourists to visit the southern province.
I think all Festivals in certain levels are elitist.
As people become mature and more people hear about us, I think we maybe able to adjust ticket prices.
We do give away a lot of tickets.
We do a lot of things throughout the year for schools in the southern province. We do workshops and seminars which are very popular. And in that way also we don’t charge for that. The Festival is also paying for that. Any profit goes back into sessions.