Writers and readers of this site should be interested in a project called 26:50 - a number-fixated title for a writing project, but there is a reason.
It’s a collaboration between the writers’ group 26 (I declare an interest as a founder) and International PEN, the worldwide community of writers that champions freedom of expression.
PEN campaigns for writers who have been persecuted, imprisoned and sometimes murdered for their words. Among those they've represented are Vaclav Havel, Salman Rushdie and Ken Saro-Wiwa.
PEN asked 26 to help them spread awareness of its Writers in Prison work, which in 2010 marks its 50th year of campaigning. So 26 decided to invite 50 of its members to each write 50 words about 50 writers PEN has campaigned for since 1960.
The results are powerful. The constraint – 50 words exactly, not just a maximum, neither more nor fewer – worked wonderfully. The writers had to consider the impact of every single word. So the results are spare yet emotional – in fact, all the more emotional for the restraint that had to be shown because of the exacting word count. It was interesting, too, how many writers naturally gravitated towards poetry in this situation.
My 50 words are about the Indonesian novelist and journalist Mochtar Lubis. Frequently imprisoned by dictators for the words he wrote about them, he continued to write, spitting words through the prison bars as I imagined him. My 50-word response and those of the other writers are here.
It was another irony that we were all writing about freedom of expression while working to a constraint. But for me it was also an endorsement of the theme of my book 26 ways of looking at a blackberry. Constraints do liberate. It’s a message for writers everywhere.
The 26:50 project continues daily until the close of PEN’s Free the Word festival at London’s South Bank on 18 April 2010.
John Simmons is author of 26 ways of looking at a blackberry, published by A&C Black.
He blogs at Blogberry.
For more info visit his website 26 Fruits.
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