Writing – Eye on the East

October 12, 2025October 12, 2025

Pablo Neruda: Poetry (and Fiction) and the ‘Products of Mankind’

Since the Nobel Prize has been in the news lately, here is a related story that’s worth revisiting.

In his acceptance speech upon being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, Chilean poet, writer, and diplomat Pablo Neruda transformed his dramatic ordeal through the treacherous Andes Mountains to Argentina escaping political prosecution, into a testament to the fundamentality of poetry – and subsequently art itself – in making us human and making our lives matter.

September 29, 2021

Selective Writer’s Block: When Some Things Are Better Left Unwritten

“Darkness is oppressive. Silence echoes what I do not want to hear. Night is a curse that keeps on coming back. Night is the green screen onto which everything is projected, what I do not want to see nor feel, my anxieties, my fears and pains. The sunrise ushers the relief of light, the glow of which makes the burden of things feel slightly lighter.

The hustle and bustle of survival gets in the way of despondence, yet the feeling lurks around almost every corner. The day feels endless because the struggle for survival offers no respite. And before you know it, darkness comes and it starts all over again. More often than not, this is how it feels these days.”