Kalolsavam | A mixed bag of old and new
The Hindu
Kalolsavam | A mixed bag of old and new
Lee Mokobe, the young South African slam poet, may not be a widely known name among aficionados. But the evocative rendition of his poem Being Transgender was one high point of the English recitation competition held on Friday at St. Joseph’s Convent GHSS, Kollam.
A striking piece that summarises the trauma and discrimination faced by transgender persons around the world, it also offered a break from routine attempts. Presented by S. Sreesha from BSS Gurukulam Higher Secondary School, Palakkad, it talks about people who are “more ghost than flesh”, a community increasingly vulnerable to human rights violations.
Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah had written We Teach Life, Sir as a response to a highly provocative question by a journalist, “Don’t you think it would all be fine if you just stopped teaching your children to hate? ” Penned during 2008-09 and all the more relevant today, the searing poem was picked by S. Sivanjaya from EVHSS, Neduvathoor, Kollam. “We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky/ We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies,” and the lines were delivered with due poignancy.
While A.V. Krishnagadha, a Class 10 student from SVRV NSS HSS Vazhoor, Kottayam, opted for Come Up from the Fields Father by Walt Whitman, Architha Binu from H S for Girls, Karunagapally, went with another festival favourite, Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. T. S. Eliot’s seminal poem The Waste Land was also not missing as B.S. Neeraja Lekshmi from NRPM HSS Kayamkulam, Alappuzha, rendered What the Thunder Said, the fifth and last part of the work that set a benchmark for the modernist movement in poetry.
Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou and I Want to Be by Maia Mayor were also among the choices of participants.
While nearly all among the 16 contestants effectively maintained the delicate balance between self-expression and dramatic appropriateness, a few couldn’t strike a chord with the audience. There were no nervous gestures or awkward postures, but they seemed slightly low on confidence.