Kata-Suara February 08

This month's Kata-Suara event was held right after the launch of "The Unknown" art exhibition at R.A. Fine Arts Gallery in Ampang, so there was quite a spill-over from one event to the other, and that resulted in the small room reserved for the Kata-Suara readings being packed with much more people than last month's event.

The event was kicked off with Usratika, a band consisting of two guitarists and a percussionist. They performed two songs, Bagaikan Si Anak Kecil and Hanya Seorang Musafir.

Check out the video of their performance:

Awesome.

Next up was Razali Endun who read two poems of his and a poem by Usman Awang (I think. I screwed up my notes again.)

Aisyah Baharuddin read poems by Kahlil Gibran--her "lover" she claimed--translated into Malay. I'm not sure if she was the one who translated it. (Again, bad note-taking on my part.) One was about three frogs, the other was about justice.

Bernice Chauly came to read her poems from her recently published poetry collection, Book of Sins.

Surprising everyone with a banjo newly brought in from Singapore was Azmyl Yunor, who performed three songs, "Bagai Malang", "Ballad of Mat Som" which was inspired by the Lat-created character, and the very KL-flavoured "Anak Dara".

But in the end Pyan Habib stole the show with his unique style of poetry.

Azman Ismail was scheduled to read but couldn't make it due to an assignment at DBP. Perhaps another time.

Anyways, look! Zedeck, Bernice, Azmyl and Reza in one picture!

Comments

I'm going to Clarion West!

So yeah! I'm going to Clarion West this year! If you didn't know, Clarion West is a really awesome science fiction and fantasy writing workshop that runs for six weeks in summer every year at Seattle and is usually taught by a faculty of award-winning authors and editors. Many students who attend this workshop also go on to have illustrious writing careers of their own too. I've been meaning to attend this workshop (or its sister workshop, Clarion UCSD, which is the original Clarion workshop but runs in San Diego around the same time) for years now but never had the courage to apply. Many reasons as to why: didn't think I'd have money for the most part, didn't think I was good enough, didn't think I could leave work long enough, didn't think I could leave family behind, etc. But something sparked inside of me late last year. I felt I should at least give it a go this time round. So I did. They requested a sample of my best work and an applicatio...

REVIEW: Confessions of an Old Boy by Kam Raslan

Kam Raslan's right. In the preface for his new book, Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures he writes that we've known Dato' Hamid all our lives. Seeing as my own dad is an old boy of MCKK, the people I get to meet when he drags me to an Old Boy function and the people he tells me of, reflect the characters found in Kam's book. It really does feel like I've known Dato' Hamid all my life. Dato' Hamid is a civil servant of the Tunku Abdul Rahman generation. He is the sort of person you rarely see nowadays, a fine example of the anachronistic Malay. This generation, groomed in the ways of the colonial British would be out of place not just in 21st century Malaysia, but in Britain too. And yet, Dato' Hamid, in all his snobbishness and patronising ways, is essentially a Malaysian. Without people like him, our country would probably never exist at all. At least not like we know it now. I'm glad that Kam Raslan decided to capture this ...

REVIEW: Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami.

UPDATE: My Wind/Pinball review can be found here . ISBN: n/a Publisher: n/a Paperback: 160 pages In Murakami fan circles, simply owning a copy of Pinball, 1973 is a mark of hardcore-ness. Like Hear the Wind Sing before it, Haruki Murakami does not allow English translations of Pinball, 1973 to be published outside of Japan. Back in the 80s, Alfred Birnbaum translated it into English and Kodansha published it as a novel for Japanese students who wanted to improve their English. While the English edition of Hear the Wind Sing continues to be reprinted and sold in Japan (and available for a moderate sum via eBay, see my review ), Kodansha stopped its reprint runs of the English edition of Pinball, 1973 and has now become a collector's item, fetching vast amounts of money on auction sites and reseller stores. Last time I checked, the cheapest copy went for USD$2500. Of course, Murakami addicts or the curious can always download a less than legal PDF of the book, painst...

Ted Mahsun

Search This Blog