Not-so-personal poetry

Though others may disagree, to me, there seems nothing more personal than poetry. Of course this isn´t to say I´ve never written my own. I have… when I was seething with anger, when my heart was broken and when I ran out of ideas and opted to pen those simple haikus. So, as you can imagine, not only would my poetry be terrible, but they would also be embarrassing.



To be honest, it´s been months since I last wrote any poems. And, as a rule, I never share my poetry. Once, I think, I put one up on my blog and as soon as I saw it loaded flashing lines that could be read by anyone who had more than 2 minutes to spare, I felt so vulnerable and I knew I had to do the right thing for all of mankind, and so I pulled it down.[break]



I´ve come across a few good ones, ones that hit you in the stomach because they are so incredible - those are precious. Poetry is aplenty, but I´ve only found a few to be valuable.



So, it was quite unlike me to agree to purchase a ticket, plant my butt and sit (quietly, a huge ordeal for me) and listen to random folks get up and recite their poems! But, it was a “Slam Poetry” week in (pockets) of Kathmandu. Slam Poetry. I´d heard of “Spoken Word” and a few times, I was even invited to attend, and in attending, they suggested I share my poems! Share my poetry? No way! Listen to theirs? No thank you. I thought if there is good poetry I´ll just read it, I don´t need to snap my fingers in a dingy café and go ooh and ahh over things I don´t understand or things that I think are actually really lame.



But, this time I agreed. I hadn´t hung out with my sister in days and it was going to be held in Gurukul which was only thirty minutes away from my campus. We´d agreed to meet, listen and go home together. Once I got there and saw the half-empty hall I was a bit disheartened wondering why I´d agreed to this.



I suppose it helped that a poet-enthusiast and one of Nepal´s own budding female slam poetess was accompanying my sister. Her excitement was hard for her to contain and as we proceeded to wait 30-minutes past the schedule hour, some of it, I admit, rubbed off on me. In fact her bright smile wiped my obnoxious smirk away.



There were three what I supposed you´d call “professional” American slam poets, and four Nepalis.



Forgive me and my memory, I didn´t catch their names, but there were two Nepalis form Lyrics Inthependense that just blew my mind. The first one I liked was in Nepali and I´d love to tell you what it was about, except I have to admit I didn´t quite catch all of it. He made me jealous because I´m eager to write in Nepali but my boyfriend tells me I am at the fifth grade level and I should give myself another year of poring over Nepali texts before I contemplate publishing anything (even a blog) in Nepali.







So, I was one tiny bit jealous and every bit impressed, by the words he threw out that were laden with meaning (that I barely understood) but sounded delicious all the same. If I can figure out my iTunes, I´ll try and upload a portion of what I was able to record for you guys to hear on

my blog.



Then there was another guy who slam poet-ed about rainbow city vs strange old city, and I assume he was talking about Kathmandu. If a blog could communicate the wit and poise with which he recited it, I´d give it a shot. But, he had cool lines like “…and her kajal eyes/they speak those casual lies”.



As it turns out, poets and poetry are pretty cool. It´s a world I don´t know and I´m too scared to explore, but for those of you who made note of and participated in Slam Poetry this week, good on you. If others like Lyrics Inthependense pop up I´ll be thrilled. True artists, like these guys, see this world in a way that I can´t, even if I squint. I won´t be slam-poeting anywhere anytime soon, but suffice to say, the fervent anti-poet in me has been converted.



(nepaliketi is a ktm-based blogger over at www.nepaliketi.net)

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