Malika Booker with her students - after a successful show at the Food Foundry
It was Jasmine who invited me to perform at the No Black Tie (a jazz bistro on Jalan Mesui near Istana Hotel where great talents from all over the world get invited to perform.I didn't know this till the evening itself.Oh wow, so honoured.Thanks Jasmine! She was with me in Francesca Beard's workshop and she had liked my work)
I was the one to 'perform' first.Given the hectic life I led, there was only a few hours' practice for the event.I wanted to memorise my lines the way Francesca did and speak from the heart.The first one went Ok..the second I started to have mental block..the third memang I nak baca from my book but tersilap pilih tajuk (on death) Had I known I was the mood setter (the first to go)I would have chosen something cheerful.Haiya..what to do...But Malika said she felt immediately at home listening to all of us (she went last)She mentioned my poetry on my father's death.I guess for a first timer, it wasn't so badlah, kan? I have a few people coming to me and said nice things.Nik and Z were there supporting me, giving me kind words of encouragement after the show.Z said she liked the piece on her grandpa (the death poem)Three of my students also came to give their support (thank you guys!)But it was a friendly environment and I made friends with Spore Founder of Slam Poetry and he did well mixing music and theatre and poetry like that.We had promised to network (his wife kept saying, "Call us when you are in Spore".Baiklah!).
Malika herself was fantastic.She was good in the last piece...mixing the Caribbean oral tradition element in her work like that.Best sangattt!! We laughed macam nak rak!
I'm having a workshop with her tomorrow.I will share here, InsyaAllah.
http://www.renaissanceone.com/artists.php?id=14
http://www.britishcouncil.org/malaysia-events-arts-malika-booker-bios.htm?mtklink=malaysia-events-arts-malika-booker-bios
3 comments:
I enjoyed my workshop with Malika (with youngish, trendy Sunway College students).She taught us the following:
1.To improve work, read as many as you can of other poets' works.Find a mentor/an influence.
2.Explore your taboos and get them out of your system (use music to draw this out and get into free writing, don't lift the pen off the page till the music piece is done)
3.Write using these: use the "eye", the incident and the epiphany when you are writing narrative poem (which is big now in the US and UK)
4.Be honest and truthful.
5.On performance: dress for the stage,pay close attention to your voice: it must be loud and varied according to the mood of your poem,if you memorise your lines and if there's a blunder, "style it up" so that the audience doesn't notice it.
6.After the show, tell yourself "it's over...let go..." and don't fret abt how things had gone wrong while you were on stage.Breathe in and out.
There were many other tips but this space is so limited...:)
Thanks for sharing. Can you elaborate no.3 for your next entry?
This is the toughest bit cos' the "eye" can be the incident too sometimes.Epiphany is that moment of realisation (it's safe to put it at the end of the poem like ok..this is what I have learnt from the incident).Eg. of an "eye' is this: where were you when Princess Di died? I was washing the dishes, you may say.And 20 years later, you tell your daughter abt it.That's an "eye".
Let me work on this further.Once I pun less blur, I will be able to give a better example. :))
Kalau structured sgt pun, it won't be so free writing anymore, right?
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