Bookish Stuff Wot Others Blogged

Here's a few things from other blogs I've enjoyed and you might like to explore.

More local writers build a home in cyberspace. Antares needs no introduction and is someone who I admire for living life very much on his terms. He has long had a fascinating and sprawling website Magick River, and now has a blog of the same name with thought-provoking and very well-written content. (Am personally not at all sure about this 9/11 conspiracy theory but he makes the most convincing case I've heard for it!) You can of course catch Antares reading on Saturday at Seksans from his new book Tanah Tujuh which was launched at the litfest. (More about the book in another post.)

Shahril Nizam is a poet and illustrator (he designed the cover for Silverfish New Writing 6, and Dina Zaman's I Am Muslim, among others). His blog pelukismelukis is a treasure trove of absolutely delightful things. His art ... just melts me, and his poetry has a whimsical magical quality which reminds me of ... Edward Lear, Lewis Carol ... I would love a whole coffee-table book of his work!

Kenny Mah of course keeps popping up on everyone else's blog and at literary events.

He's an incredibly nice guy (and nice people always leave this grouch feeling most confused). His blog, Life for Beginners, has posts about the local lit scene, his training to become a Body Balance instructor, and much more. Best of all, he has put up a collection of short-fiction and poetry Broken Mornings, which you can download for free. Kenny, of course, is also reading this Saturday at Seksan's.

And elsewhere:

There is as always much good stuff on Deepika's blog read@peace. I particularly enjoyed her post on meeting Neil Gaiman when he was in Singapore. (I've started reading American Gods and hereby declare myself another fan!)

Zafar of Dream Ink has a fascinating piece on how to write a good bad review! And much more good stuff, of course.

Eric Forbes has an excellent piece on publishing and has posted up some great poetry from a whole variety of poets.

Books Love Me blogger Josette does the round of Penang bookshops ... but likes Borders best.

So many books, so little time. Dari Jiwa Rasa gets mindboggled by the maths and asks, how many books can you finish in a year. He also links in this post to the story of Chang Wei Han who read 558 books in just 15 months. Who says Malaysians don't read!

Tunku Halim writes about why Malaysian writers are actually much luckier than their counterparts in the West - and he's absolutely right. Halim's new book 44 Cemetery Road is now out too.

Sally Ann has some great pictures of Benjamin Zephaniah visiting her school and her enthusiasm for poetry shows just why making this kind of encounter happen is so important!

I'm sure to have missed something important, so please slip me a note in the comments if you know of anything ...

Zephaniah and Me

I have to tell you this story.

I had just a minute or two to chat to Benjamin Zephaniah before the Central Market gig and managed to ask him the question that had been burning inside me ever since I read that he came from Handsworth in Birmingham. Did he know the school I'd taught at?

Know it? Why he had been a student there. (Though a few years before I got there.)

And I had been a teacher in my first year of teaching, terrified out of my wits at being thrown into this inner-city multi-cultural environment.

I was, of course, white, middle-class and had scarcely any friends that didn't fit the same mould. I hadn't seen much of the world. Hadn't travelled overseas. I came into teaching with a B.Ed degree in my hand, a lot of idealism and very little practical knowledge of how to manage a classroom.

The kids at Broadway were difficult to say the least. One of the classes I was given was an underachieving class of 16 year olds who made my life hell. The whiteness of my skin made me the enemy as soon as I walked into the classroom. Most of the kids were of Jamaican descent, were Rastafarians (though dreadlocks were of course not allowed in school) and insisted on speaking patois among themselves. I had serious discipline problems, caused as much as anything by my total inexperience. (None of my teaching practices, which had all been in Worcestershire schools, had prepared me for inner-city Birmingham.)

The kids learned ... absolutely nothing with me. I was just trying to survive from lesson to lesson. On one occasion a chair was thrown at me. One student threatened to knife me after school. In the depth of Winter I got bombarded with dozens of snowballs walking to the classroom, some of which contained stones.

Another time I was late for a class because the school was on three campuses and we had to take a minibus between them and it was often late. I found that the kids had broken into the stockroom and set fire to the English books. Fortunately teachers saw the smoke on fire and rushed to put it out. On another occasion before I reached the classroom one kid stabbed the one and only white student in the stomach with a roll of newspapers, bruising her ribs, and the parents decided to take legal action against me. (The case was later dropped.)

The teachers were a mixed-bunch. Some very concerned about the kids and able to reach them. Others horribly racist: they would talk about the West Indian girls in the staffroom for example as "jungle-bunnies". Some ruled their classrooms by force, and at times this particular campus felt more like a borstal than a school.

My head-of-department decided one day to come and show me how to restore order, picked the main trouble maker up by the scruff of the collar and slammed him against the wall, issuing threats against him if he stepped out of line. The whole group were as quiet as lambs for the next forty minutes ... but not in subsequent lessons.

Truancy was through the roof. After school riots were common with gang fights between kids of neighbouring schools, and the police were always called in before the damage to property got too bad.

I wish I could tell you that I turned my class around. Like in a Hollywood movie.

I didn't.

I failed miserably and was miserable. I felt the kids didn't give me a chance. I felt the school didn't help me. I felt my B.Ed degree didn't prepare me.

I lay awake at night terrified about the next day. I got depressed. Called in sick too often. My boyfriend of nine years decided to leave me - partly because this daily fight left me with nothing left over for myself or for him, and his own star was rising in the rock-star firmament.

I wanted out of teaching completely.

But this story has several happy endings.

I know the kind of environment Zephaniah (a self-confessed bad boy, a gang member who carried a gun ... and didn't even learn to read and write until he was 21!) comes from. I can see how far he's travelled, what he's had to overcome ... and I'm incredibly proud of him, the way he's taken all that anger and directed it to says things that should be said.

I hope the kids I tried to teach and failed all those years ago made something good of their lives.

I'm grateful now for all that they taught me about myself (how narrow and parochial I was!) and about what teaching needs to be.

I left the school but spent some months doing "supply teaching" which meant spending time in many different city schools. I think that observing a wide range of schools and teachers gave me a solid framework on which to build my own teaching.

I went to Nigeria as a volunteer teacher, and had such great kids there that I realised that teaching was, after all, what I really wanted to do.

I spent a spell in another inner-city Birmingham school after Nigeria, and found teaching there a real pleasure. I had grown and changed in the time I'd been away. These kids respected me, and I could, at last, begin to teach.

Zounds! It's Zephaniah!

Michael Cheang has an excellent piece about performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah in Star Two today.

How many of you went to see this hard-hitting and hugely entertaining poet when he was in KL last week? I saw part of his performance at the Litfest itself, but the Central Market gig sponsored by the British Council was the main act.

The audience was amazing. here must have been 200 people crammed into the gallery space. For poetry!!! What in the name of Shakespeare is happening to this city?

I was late (thanks to the time it took to get a plate of fried rice at Bau-Bau cafe!) and got there halfway through Rahmat Harun's set. Rahmat, it has to be said, has even better dreadlocks than Zephaniah (I remember how we decorated them with gerbera daisies at the first "Readings" he came to!) and I enjoyed his last poem which was a personal letter to Zephaniah.

The crowd were very appreciative of Zephaniah who took us through a hugely entertaining series of his poems, many of which had a strong political undercurrent.

What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us, for example, is about a gross miscarriage of justice in Britain. An Afro-Caribbean boy was murdered at a bus stop and his (white) killers were never brought to justice, although everyone knew that they were guilty.

We know who the killers are,
We have watched them strut before us
As proud as sick Mussolinis’,
We have watched them strut before us
Compassionless and arrogant,
They paraded before us,
Like angels of death
Protected by the law.

I enjoyed the quirky magic of White Comedy which playfully turns the language on its head to ask, why is everything white considered good, and everything black bad?

I waz whitemailed
By a white witch,
Wid white magic
An white lies,
Branded by a white sheep
I slaved as a whitesmith
Near a white spot
Where I suffered whitewater fever.
Whitelisted as a whiteleg
I waz in de white book
As a master of white art,
It waz like white death.

There was a very nice poem about father to son conversations with his father, another that made me laugh in which he had turned racial stereotypes very nicely on their heads and I think one about banknotes (which he collects).

He finished with his charming and funny Talking Turkey ... which might just turn me into a vegetarian next Christmas!

You can find out more about Zephaniah and read a selection of poetry on his website.

Update:

Read Sally Ann's account of Zephaniah's visit to her school.

Some Litfest Photos

Two poetic lovelies: Sharanya Manivannan with Indonesian poet Lakshmi Pamuntjak (right). I took this the first day of the festival when a whole gang of us descended on Delicious for lunch.

Courting controversy. I introduced one of Dina Zaman's sessions, and she read about from I Am Muslim about "born-again virgins".
Eva Kriseova sponsored by the Embassy of the Czech republic, reading outside Starbucks in Bangsar Village 2. She's a writer with a fascinating story to tell. She worked as a reporter during the Prague Spring in 1986. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia her writings were banned. She lost her job and went underground. Later, she worked as an advisor to President Vaclav Havel.

Benjamin Zephaniah strutting his stuff at Marmalade. I sneaked a preview of his poetry at this session but enjoyed much more his great performance at Central Market last night. Plan to write more about that later.

Even though I had interviewed Canadian author Camilla Gibb a couple of days before, I was fascinated to hear even more about her writing.

I didn't manage to get to Tash Aw's workshops but met up with him at MPH Bangsar Village for his "meet the public session". Such a very nice guy. He told me that he was working hard on the second novel and trying hard to not to be distracted.

I introduced New Zealand poet/novelist Elizabeth Smither's session at Alexis. I enjoyed her well observed poems - small true moments. Was also stunned by just how prolific a writer this lady is - she has 14 volumes of poetry (soon to be 15), 4 novels, 3 (or was it four?) collections of short fiction, and other published works. All this produced around her full-time librarian's job! She says she writes 250 words of a novel everyday, and keeps a notebook on her to jot down ideas for poetry that occur to her throughout the day.

Litfest Fringe

So you're not going to the KL Litfest (KLILF 2007) because you're working and feel a bit sick about missing events you enjoy? Or maybe you can't afford the registration?

The good news is that some of the biggest names will be appearing in other venues around town and events are either free or at minimal cost! Yipeee!

British performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah will be appearing at Central Market Annexe on Friday March 30th at 8.30p.m.in a performance jointly presented by British Council, Ricecooker and Bau-Bau Café featuring Wayang Kadbod by the kids from Projek Kampung Seni, local street poet Rahmat Haron and music by Tenderfist and Kuchalana. Admission RM10 at the door, no reservations necessary. This promises to be one of the most exciting live literature events of the year. Don't miss it.

Here's more about Zephaniah from the British Council website:

Born in 1958 in Birmingham and raised in Jamaica and Handsworth, the young Benjamin left school at the age of 14. By the time he was 15, he had developed a strong home town following as a young poet who was capable of speaking on local and international issues.

He published his first book Pen Rhythm at age 22, though it was through performance that Benjamin earned a name for himself. His second collection of poetry, The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985) contained a number of poems attacking the British legal system; Rasta Time in Palestine (1990), an account of a visit to the Palestinian occupied territories, contained poetry and travelogue; Too Black, Too Strong (2001) was inspired by his tenure as Poet in Residence at the chambers of London barrister Michael Mansfield QC and by his attendance at both the inquiry into the 'Bloody Sunday' shootings and the inquiry into the death of Ricky Reel, an Asian student found dead in the Thames. His poetry collections include books for children: Talking Turkeys (1994) and Funky Chickens (1996), andnovels for teenagers: Face (1999), described by the author as a story of 'facial discrimination'; Refugee Boy (2001), the story of a young boy, Alem, fleeing the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea; and Gangsta Rap (2004).

He has been Writer in Residence at the Africa Arts Collective in Liverpool and Creative Artist in Residence at Cambridge University; has received numerous honorary doctorates for his work in literature, and in 1998, was appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education to advise on the place of music and art in the National Curriculum. He has written plays for radio, TV and the stage, and includes several music recordings in his repertoire.

Canadian author Camilla Gibb (left) is going to be appearing at Kinokuniya bookstore in KLCC at 7.30 on the 30th, and also at MPH Mid Valley Megamall, KL 2-3p.m. on 1st April.

Our own Tash Aw, author of the award-winning The Harmony Silk Factory, will be appearing at the Book Cafe in MPH, 1 Utama at 8pm on Wednesday 28th March.

On Thursday 29th, he will be at Borders in Berjaya Times Square (Jalan Imbi, KL) from 4pm to 5pm, and at MPH in Bangsar Village II (Bangsar Baru, KL) from 6pm to 7pm. Later at MPH Mid Valley Megamall, KL, from 8pm to 9pm, there will be a book-signing session with the author. More details in todays Star Two. (But oh - ouch ouch ouch - how I wish they'd drop his price tag off the headlines!)

And then, of course, we've got Chris Mooney-Singh and the Word Forward poets at Seksan's on Saturday afternoon. Not only is the event itself free, but we also have lovely free wine courtesy of our sponsor La Bodega. Now how can you resist!

Update:

Sharanya tells me that on Sunday April 1st at 9pm at No Black Tie there will be poetry by Cyril Wong (S'pore), Bernice Chauly, Jerome Kugan and Sharanya herself. Entry RM15. (Click poster to enlarge.)

Vegetarian Christmas Card

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos turkeys jus wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, an turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don't eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate an not on yu plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I'm on your side.

Read the rest of Benjamin's Zephaniah's poem Talking Turkey on the BBC website and enjoy the video.

And if your Christmas wish is to see the poet perform live ... well it might just come true in 2007!

Wish you all the best for a very happy Christmas!