It was a pretty big crowd for an event midweek, in an obscure part of Petaling Jaya and once again, it is great to see poetry events so enthusiastically supported.
Our local poets did us proud as usual. I asked George Wielgus to open, since if anyone is going to wake up an audience and put them in the mood, it's George. He was followed by the gentle pieces of Jerome Kugan, and Bernice Chauly (who read such a good new poem about a conversation with the man who snatched her bag last week).
Scream Blue Murmur - Gordon Hewitt, Chelly McLear, Ellen Factor, Aisling Doherty and PhatBob delivered a powerful set, fitting their words and voices together seamlessly. I particularly enjoyed their pieces about the year 1968 - "the year that shook society's foundations from one end of the globe to the other".
"Loud Girl" Elaine Foster, who won the Green poetry slam recently closed the first half.
After a short break, the charmingly named Happy Unicorn Collective took over. This was their last minute fund-raising effort for Project Connect, just a few hours before taking the plane for "that 14 hour flight to the land of scones and fish 'n chips". The group, comprising Dianne Dayanna, Priya K., Nurul, Patricia Low, Tan Koon, Fairuz S. and Adam Kharul provided an unusual mix of music (loved the children's xylophone!), poetry and visual art.
The evening was very well rounded off by Reza Rosli, and Sheena Baharuddin (who also had very nice musical accompaniment).
We will, I hope be seeing more of Scream Blue Murmur here in the not too distant future, and if we can arrange it, perhaps there may even be some workshops.
Literary Activism rules, OK?
The rest of my photos from last night are on Facebook.
Update :
Reza has posted some excellent videos of the readers over at Viddler.
7 comments:
Sounds like a very good event. I missed this one, but would like to go to the next...
It was very good! Sharon, you only messed up at murder and you were great too, keeping things running so smoothly.
Video of one of SBM's pieces here.
ps I hope they'll be back for workshops. they're very engaging poets and gave some great feedback at the end of the night.
Sorry I missed it. Next time I'm in Malaysia, I'll look you up.
machinist - nice that you got feedback ...
anthony - you would be very welcome to come and do a reading - contact me if you do come here. sharonbakar at yahoo dot com. and on facebook!
Totally missed it because I was an idiot and messed up the dates in my head. :(
it was a lovely night! you were a great MC, you should host night gigs more often :)
- liyana
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