Head to Head Haiku
Something a little more substantial this time. One of the friends I made last year, Daniel Ferri, is a teacher and poet originally from Chicago, now living in Canberra. He’s helping me out with a few of the Traverse Poetry events this year, most immediately as the director/advisor of a performance taking place at the Corinbank festival, on 28 February. This will be collaborative poetry performed by Omar Musa (winner of the Australian Poetry Slam ’08), Seung Baek (winner of the 2008 Night Words poetry contest), Adam Hadley (winner of the 2009 Woodford Folk Festival poetry slam), MC Fenella (all-round hip-hop all star) and yours truly, based on the themes of play, fire and soil… more info on that later.
I wanted to mention Daniel because of a very cool poetry competition he created in 1995, called Head to Head Haiku (and the related form, Toe to Toe Tanka). From Daniel’s description, it’s a very intense competition in which the judges have about 30 seconds to make a decision on which of two poets go through into the next round. He said one of the most remarkable features of the contest was the silence and focus the develops in an audience as the event progresses.
We’re planning to run a Head to Head Haiku competition later on in the year so we’ll see if we can get the same level of focus here in Canberra.
Meanwhile, this was the only video I could find, which is a battle (between Jonica and Tazuo Yamaguchi) rather than the sort of competition I described, but it still gives you a good idea of the style. Check it out and let me know if you’d like to have a try at it!
Words written by one who never wins
enuf wit the competitions!
wedder it b face to face tow to toe arse to mouth, let us make 2009 a year where we all just fill our ‘earts wit luv & lets leave the competing to the capitalists
peace & luv & glad for dat
Actually I was having a chat with a poet this afternoon about poetry competitions. He mentioned the slam in Melbourne called Babble, at which the prize ($10) is really not the point as the scores can vary from 0 x infinity to 10+++ Point was, the comp was there to get people up and speaking. I feel similarly about The Front slams – it’s there to create an accessible structure, to get more people excited about poetry, than to make people more competitive. Leave that to the national slam!
the event that focused my mind around competition was the ACT writers poetry award and the hurtful words by the judge “lines in an otherwise strict form that went seriously awry and became doggerel” (we want more mentors and less english teachers) http://www.actwriters.org.au/ACTawards.html
maybe i am too sensitive, which i think not to be the case, but i would like to see a more collaborative, a more mentoring attitude created. many times in various slams/competitions i have seen good work ignored by judges &c as the work submitted, read what ever was not in the popular form of the day.
i would agree with your Babble friend and would like to see prizes given to people who have never read before, for example, as a way to encourage people. poets are a very small group, it would be a shame to see people drop out for lack of encouragement, only because they chose to read a sonnet, or declaim their work to the music of Carmen.
having said that i feel the work you do is valuable, and a bright light in an otherwise dismal town and none of this should be seen as a personal attack, but rather a critique of the form of the slam.
peace out man
Of course of course! And I really appreciate your well-thought out comments. Thank you.
It would be good to have a chat about this stuff in person – maybe after the Queanbeyan slam? Till then, will keep what you’ve said in mind.