Tagore Poetry Competition

Hello faithful readers of the Hive!

Greetings from Queen Bee and may you produce works as splendorous as the healing magic of royal jelly, my darling busy bees.

Now, some juicy and much needed break - sampad is organising a Tagore poetry competition which ends at the end of the month. This is excellent news for the new year and I do hope that many of you will take part and be a part of this wonderful initiative to ressurect Tagore whom I love.

Tips:
Read some of Tagore's famous works here: http://www.schoolofwisdom.com/history/teachers/rabindranath-tagore/gitanjali/, and look out for the aspects of his poems that you finds endearing or powerful in terms of impact and style.

My list goes like this:
seasons - he makes many references to the seasons and I share that connection with the seasons
journey - he speaks of everyday things and most of his poems seem to have a journey of their own.
speech - the intrusion of speech in between verses reflect real life situation and situate the poem and the persona in real life.

The talking about Tagore, you end up thinking of love because his poetry is laden with love.

This poem was the first thing I wrote since I could not think of a specific topic I wanted to write about yet and so I wrote on love.

On love

The morning mist, sweetened with the fragrance of blooming lilies

Come to me in your cold embrace, causing tingles and shivers

To dance along my spine playfully as you pluck at my heartstrings

And strike a merry tune. “Oh, what a merry fellow!”

A fiend, a thief, a lover, a demon! Your eyes as bright as a newly

Blossomed lotus; what names could I call you but these? My line

Of sight would always seek your form, my ears thirsty for the

Seductive timbre of your voice, your sudden laugh could catapult me

To the heights of Heaven and the depths of despair. “Be still!”

I thump my fist against my chest and hope the drums beating wildly within

My bosom will cease – but they break against my heart slowly, with the teasing lilt

Of his smile, the sway of hips, like the sway of the waves,

You drown me in the sweet misery of young love. 

Please share your thoughts with me or discuss some of your ideas. :)

Re-imagining and Re-defining Poetry

Our goal here at the Hive is not not just to suggest, address and digest all kinds of writing - although my focus has been largely taken up by the Just Write poetry project. I realise, after going through the few submissions trickling in that many people still do not understand why people write.

People write for many reasons - to express themselves, share thoughts and feelings, but beyond that, we write to problematise and document our everyday struggles and issues we face throughout our lives. Poetry is unique in its approach to persuade, disuade, suggest, portray the different issues through feelings, imagery, word play and sound.

While we're on this track, my main point is this: poetry need not be traditional (same rhyme, same stanza length). Personally, I suggest the free-verse and free-style of poetry as in can be much more liberating and allows for much more creative freedom.

At the same time, by employing certain techniques such as visual poetry (a future topic), palindrome (something like a mirror effect, also a possible future topic) can be more liberating artistically. The results sometimes forces the writer to move out of their comfort zone and write 'outside the box'. At the same time, it can be much more pleasurable to write, as well as to read.

For example,
below is lipogram (where an alphabet is dropped from the entire poem). The alphabet 'a' has been dropped from the poem.

Power is purpose corruptive;
corrosive forces curdling
white into sour milk.

Power is purpose corruptive;
Toy soldiers lumbering below
ruins of empires, broken.

Power is purpose corruptive;
Control too tightly eventually ruptures -

Fright, that flighty fiend has come home.

The poem is polysemic, in the sense that it carries a different meaning to different people. The rhytym does not flow and it is intentional - to disturb the reader, and provoke him or her to question 'power'.

Disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting that the above poem is the best. It is just an example of free form. Also, I would like those of you reading this blog to question the lack of consistent imagery here and how that affects a poem through its impact.

YOU DON'T NEED GOOD ENGLISH. YOU JUST NEED TO WRITE :)

Editor's Note:

What is this? This is the slogan for our first event and my brainchild. To encourage other Malaysians who love writing poetry and those who want get published, my fellow editors and I have organised this event where we want people to write poetry and well, tell their story.

This occurred to me one day, when I just told myself that I am going to self-publish an anthology of poems, but then again, I thought it would be far more interesting if we published a poetry anthology for Malaysian youth by Malaysians beacause our generation is most unique and diverse with different understandings of race, politics, culture and much more. And I thought, why not poetry?

Poetry is a dying art, and although it thrives in different parts of the world, in Malaysia there is a sad lack of appreciation for poetry. Most Malaysians wirte poetry as pasttime but do not seek to develop their raw efforts that sometimes give off a glimmer of a potential work of art. What we seek to do here is to gather these different voices and give space for talented Malaysians to get published and a platform to speak to the world.

 Regulations

1. Theme: Our theme is "Love"

Although our theme is "Love", what we want to do here is to promote young Malaysians to think outside the box by considering other types of love - the unconventional "love" that is not necessarily pure and enduring.

Think of:

The politics of sexuality,
the age divide,
Cultural erosion,
Political reform,
Drug abuse,
trangsgender issues,
postcolonial identities,
Love of fashion,
Marriage,
Entering the working world,
family,
Love as defined by things etc...




2. Wordcount: More than 50 words.


3.You may write in English, Malay or a mixture of English and Malay. You are allowed to use culture specific words such as "vibuthi" (Tamil) and the same for Chinese - but the author is responsible to provide an explanation for the said word in a footnote.


4. Heavy cultural significance and usage is would be very welcome (although it is not a criterion in the selection process).


5. Should you wish to include previously published poetry, kindly check with your publisher regarding copyright issues.

6. Any person is allowed to submit up to four poems.

Submission

To submit, download our cover page from http://www.mediafire.com/?zmolz5re6gew7sh

Dateline is 31st November 2011.

All entries are to be emailed to writinghive@gmail.com.

Notifications

All selected poems will be published in the poetry anthology.  There is no prize. In fact, winners may have to contribute to printing costs, but we will try to get some sponsors and maybe some donations.

Winners will be notified via email and their names will be published on this blog.

Tips and the kind of poems we are looking for will also be published on the blog.

Queries

Please email us all queries, questions and curiosities with the subject titled 'Query'.

If you have a group of more than five people who are interested to participate, we are willing to conduct short poetry writing classes to show the different ways literary devices can be used to achieve effect. The coaching is free of charge.

All the best. Carpe diem.

With love,

Loe.