Haiku Slam @ Zouk

Went to the Zouk poetry slam last night, not intending to read. Unfortunately, they needed to rustle up 16 readers for a haiku slam, so they press-ganged me into the proceedings. Fortunately, haiku are very easy to write. Cynical haiku challenging the form, even more so:

1.

Sixty years ago
they tortured, bombed and raped us.
Now, we write haiku.

2.

My cock, seventeen
syllables long! Yet partner
still not satisfied!

3.

Even MTV
has longer attention span
than haiku master.

4.

Merdeka! Next month:
Tang shi slam, pantun slam and
Hindu epic slam!

5.

This competition
is rigged: laughter outweighs depth.
Ha! Take that, Basho!

I ended up in second place (which I'm quite happy about, since I haven't come near to winning a slam since Writers' Festival 2003). I'm currently feeling a need to go back and learn more from the slam scene, which after all represents perhaps the only solid poetry community here, and has managed to breed three especially good and committed slammers - Marc Nair, Pooja Nansi and Bani Haykal, who was featured in the Arts Fest this year as a collaborator in Forward Moves, despite being only of NS age. They're getting published under Word Forward soon. :)

Savinder's pointed out to me how it's difficult for established Singapore poets to go up there and compete in the 3-minute slams, because our pride gets terribly hurt when we lose to a nursery rhymer (happened to me, happens to everyone). But the slam movement is probably the literary movement in Singapore that has the most committed penetration of schools and youth communities. And other established writers - Robert Yeo, Richard Lord, Yong Shu Hoong - are regulars at these events.

I mean hell, I just want to *know* this scene. It'd be great to become a slammer in my own right (I have written performance poems, but they're few and far between), but it feels like it's more important just to *be* there, to *know* what's happening, not to become obsolete.

I've got a terribly polyamorous approach to life. I read in different cultures and write in different genres and sleep in different beds (on occasion) and get staged by different theatre companies and attempt to eat a varied diet of all major food groups at every single fucking meal.

And I want - like the Theatreworks people - to know something of what's going on in different parts of the local arts scene. I know people in theatre and visual arts and writing and maybe film (no... not really), but what about indie music, classical music and dance? What about non-entertainment journalism, activism, fashion, design, high cuisine, architecture, science, history, philosophy, academia? It's not about the "arts" scene, for crying out loud; it's about a network of ideas; a community of people in this country who *think* and *make stuff* for a living.

I mean, we're a small country, right? We haven't developed *that* fast. Don't we know each other anymore?