[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]
I have a terrible confession to make: When I was young, working towards a degree in English Literature, I not only studied poetry, I wrote it too.
Now that I’ve got that dirty little secret out of the way, I can talk a little about one of the enduring delights of living in Vanuatu: The poetry of the language.
In literature and linguistics, pidgin tongues usually come across as the simple country cousin of ‘proper’ languages. That may be, but too many people seem to think that ‘simple’ and ‘stupid’ are synonymous. Nothing could be farther from the truth.