Our Event, the Capricorn!

So ... it turns out that our event, Readings, is a Capricorn (since it was born 8th January 2005) which makes it (according to audience member, Dave Tee, "ambitious, strong willed and never prepared to say die"!)

Forgive a short detour to nostalgia.

We began of course at Darling Muse gallery, and later in 2005 moved to Seksan's and have had a home here ever since. Bernice was the mummy of Readings, and I took over as adoptive mum when her mum became terminally ill, and then she fully handed over the event to me and started a new one, Ceritaku!, at No Black Tie.

Over the years we've given more than 160 writers space to read their work and given them a meeting place where friendships have been forged and collaborations born.

And as straits-mongrel (who also gave me permission to use his beautiful pictures) points out beautifully in his post Reading in Colours,  this event has brought together a huge diversity of folks in the kind of Muhibbah spirit that this 1 Malaysia thing is supposed to be about. Frankly, that's never been on the conscious agenda, but has definitely been one of the best things that has naturally emerged from the event.

And now we've launched a book project which hopefully will put event and writers on the map.

So a party to celebrate this was in order, and party we did.

We welcomed back some of our earliest readers and introduced some new ones.

I've been trying to get hold of The Loud girl aka Elaine Foster ever since I first heard her read at one of The British Council's Wayang Kata events.  She could also be crowned slam queen of KL, and is organising spoken word events now in collaboration with Word Forward in Singapore.  I especially loved the first piece she read, which she had written in collaboration with George Wielgus and Tsiung Han See about the coming revolution and what it would not be like!

Jo Kukathas, actor, playwright, director, and driving force behind Instant Cafe Theatre had been one of the participants in the British Council's creative writing workshops earlier this month.  I loved the pieces she brought to share with the group, and she read from one of them - she isn't prepared yet to say whether it is fiction or autobiography ("It's a something.") which tells the story of larger than life family members.  I really am looking forward to more.

Some three years back, O Thiam Chin told the sad story about how hard it was for him to self-publish his first collection of short fiction and get the copies sold.  How far he's come since then, with a very well-received second book, Never Been Better, published by MPH. (And the bookshop sent along copies for sale.)

And then it was time for cake! We actually had three cakes.  Two of them were red velvet cakes with butter-cream icing ordered from That Last Slice, and they tasted every bit as good as they looked. (Thanks, Aishah,  for driving over from Shah Alam to deliver!)

The third was an absolutely delicious chocolate cake which Saras had had a friend bake for us, and very much appreciated. 

We blew out candles and made a wish - for the next 5 - no, 50 years of Readings to be as successful.


After the break, Bernice Chauly read from the book she is finishing Growing Up with Ghosts which she describes as:

... a literary autobiography, a memoir of sorts in five voices ... about her Chinese and Punjabi family and diasporas which span hundreds of years.

It will also form part of her MA in English Literature and Creative Writing at University Malaya.  Bernice has also been chosen as one of four writers worldwide to participate in Winternachten's (International Writers' Festival of The Hague) tour of the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname in April on the theme A Sense of Belonging.

What I've heard of the new work so far (in the workshops and here in Readings) shows that Bernice is working with fascinating material, and as she says, writing of this kind has been very much neglected in Malaysia. I think it also takes a lot of courage to put your own story out there in the public arena.

Do read this interview Bernice did with The Nutgraph last year, in which she shares some of her personal history with us.

Kam Raslan is the writer who has read more frequently at Readings than any other and  we have followed his Datuk Hamid from his first tentative fumblings with a Swiss milkmaid,  appearing in his own column in Off The Edge, and finally getting a whole book - which the Malaysian public took to their hearts - dedicated to his adventures.  Now it seems that there is a sequel in the pipeline, and the extract that Kam read was as endearing and as funny as ever.  It had the Datuk in a department store attempting to choose a perfume for The Wife's birthday, when a whiff of a fragrance called Betrayal sets off a train of Proustian memory ...

I  had to put Rahmat Harun last, because he is just such an impossible act to follow.  And of course the famous  Keranamu Malaysia had to be the centrepiece of his performance ....  This guy is a force of nature!

Thanks very much to Seksan for the wonderful space (though I was a bit sad that for the first time there was no art on the walls), to all who read and all who supported, to Aishah and Saras for cakes, and to all those who helped set up and clear away.  Nothing happens without you all.

Rahmat the Rebel

It is not only the artists who should change the country and the world that they live in. It is everybody’s responsibility. The first step is to open up imagination.

Controversial poet (and artist and rebel!) Rahman Harun responds to Bissme's searching questions in the Sun and along the way talks about (among much else) the ISA, the environment, the state of the country, and how he marched to Putrajaya with others to hand the PM a pillow.

You can watch Rahmat performing his most famous poem, Keranamu Malaysia, a liturgy of Malaysian slogans on YouTube, here.

Raja Ahmad's Home for Art

Went along to the opening of Raja Ahmad Aminullah's gallery, RA Fine Arts, yesterday. It's in a bungalow house tucked away in Jalan Aman just behind City Square, on Jalan Tun Razak. Some literary types were there among the art lovers. Had a long chat with Thor Kah Hoong and Ted Mahsun. I bumped into one of my ex-MCKK students, Latt Shariman, whom I hadn't seen for more than twenty years ... and of course in my usual blur way didn't recognise him. Also met a couple of old school friends of Abu's and we chatted about how (even if a bit belatedly) we might finally get the Burgess plaque project off the ground.

Gave poet Rahmat Harun the frangipani treatment.

Raja Ahmad with the Prince Regent of PerakRaja Nazrin Shah and Tuanku Zara Salim who were the guests of honour, and behind them (in the orange shirt) speaker for parliament Tan Sri Ramli Ngah Talib

I was introduced to the prince and had a nice chat about my days in Kuala Kangsar.

I saw the great man of Malaysian literature A. Samad Said sitting alone and plucked up courage to say hello. No sooner had I sat down next to him than he said "Are you Sharon Bakar the blogger?" and called over his wife to meet me! Really, I was laughing!

The gallery has some excellent art and is open by appointment, call 03-21617431.

Bounteous Book Bargains

Went along to the Pay Less Warehouse Sale and took along a young guy called Nicholas who writes very well and has just finished his A levels in Singapore. I don't think he expected the sale to be so big or for there to be so many must read books going so cheaply. Yes, it is a very good sale - just have the others have been.

But maybe because I've been to so many sales lately and my shelves are groaning under the weight of unread books, I didn't jump into the fray with such gleeful abandon. Was very picky about my choices. (Not so Nicholas who filled a huge carton.)

Warehouse sales are a good place to socialise. Here's poet and artist Rahmat Harun.

And here's another friend and poet, Raja Ahmad. We went for a drink and chat with them at the A&W afterwards.

I'm beginning to realise that there is a breed of folks you can call Kaki Warehouse Sale. Here's Justin, Margaret and Joel with boxes and boxes of books. I got talking to Justin and Margaret at the last Pay Less Sale, and learned how they are building a library ...

... and they're so systematic about it. Justin has the list of books he wants to find with many of the books crossed off!

I also bumped into Tina whom I'd also met at the last sale and I was adding enthuistically to her pile! And Yvonne Lee. And Simran, who has just joined our book club. And Peter who works in pay Less in One Utama, but couldn't resist coming to look for books on his day off! (He used to work for Tower records and we used to talk classical music whenever I went in there.)

I came home with this pile of books for just RM36. Not a big pile, but good stuff to keep me happy.


So ... what did you buy?

Pictures from La Bodega

Some photos from the other night at La Bodega, all but the first taken by Arnee of British Council. (My efforts were pathetic - blurry profile images of poets with their eyes closed - blame it on the Long Island Iced Tea ...)

No room for even one more ... have you ever seen a poetry reading so packed?

Kutu guy Fahmi Fadzil reads No Exit ...

The sexy Sharanya Manivannan struts her stuff ...

Rahmat Harun sets the world on fire ...

The incomparable Francesca Beard ...

A Surfeit of Readings

Brain got sozzled with other people's words yesterday p.m.

The Darling Muse gig was on. Kam Raslan was first up, reading more of his novel about his datuk. A line I laughed at: "England when it was still part of the Malaysian Empire. ... London was our reward."

Nizam had his Kisah Dua Wanita performed by three friends. Bless his heart, he'd read in my blog that this hopeless Mat Salleh isn't the best at following spoken Malay and had printed off the text in a little booklet. It made understanding much easier, particularly as the piece was written in Kelantanese dialect. (Love the music of it.)

Zedeck looked all bashful when you could see his face at all, hidden beneath a cascade of hair. (He looked a bit like that ghost in The Ring.) He ummed and erred and fidgeted with his notebook annoyingly - just like an unwilling kid forced to read out something in front of the class, dragging his feet every inch of the way. And a writer should never rubbish his own work before he reads! Once he got going he was fine, and the piece entertaining and well observed.

Bernice read a heartfelt piece she'd written about three years ago about the pains of being a mother and the lost rebelliousness of youth. She is working on a one-woman show based around this material.

After a short break Rahmat was up. His dreadlocked hair was like a piece of installation art, like gnarled branches of a tree, and into it he'd woven a bright red gerbera flower from one of the flower arrangements. His t-shirt had a picture of a couple of stylised piggies for the sake of true rebellion. He'd been just a little too much into the generously donated La Bodega wine, I think. His first "piece" I'd call a "sound poem" - was it scripted or just improvised on the spot? Then he read (with plenty of outrage) a psychiatrist's letter about his purported "dadah addiction" as if it was a poem (he was arrested for possession of cannabis).

A performance artist and poet, Arahmaini, read next. (She's currently doing an artist's residence at Rimbun Dahan.) I understood her first poem about wanting to be a prophet but being told by her father that she could not be one because she is a woman. There was a longer passionate piece, conplete with ghostly sound effects about her father, a refuse collector. Didn't understand this one. Nor why she poured and drank a glass of whisky and then smashed the glass on the floor with the final words.

But it doesn't matter if I don't understand the readings in Malay. It's great that the two languages are side by side. That writers make one community.

Later in the evening went to a reading at Maya gallery on Telawi 3 (the galleries are the lit. places!). I was due to interview poet Nathaniel Tarn who was stopping in KL briefly on his way to Sarawak with his wife. Shall post up the article I'm writing after it appears in next Sunday's Starmag.

More than deserved my pint of of Kilkenny at Finnegan's afterwards - eating all those words makes you thirsty.