Sunday, March 05, 2006

What’s puisi-poesy about?

[We do not know how well this project will work and how long it can be sustained, but here’s what we hope to do during this short trial]

As mentioned in the blog description, this would be a place to sembang-sembang – the malay word and local phrase for meeting up for chit chat - about poetry. The other word, mamak refers to open air, roadside stalls that sell a rich array of wonderfully delicious Malaysian food from evening to the wee hours of the morning. It’s a place where Malaysians meet up and socialise with friends and colleagues, while having copious amounts of drinks, especially the sweet, frothy and pipingly hot teh tarik (loosely translated as pulled tea). Mamak has since entered the local idiom, and when one says ‘let’s mamak’, it means, let’s go to a meet up for chit-chat and some food. This food metaphor which aptly captures our Malaysian love for food would hopefully be similarly translated here into a love for poetry.

Each week, as our time and schedule permits, one or two contributors will put up a poem he/she likes or have recently read and make some observations on the craft and ‘meaning’ of the poem. Being informal, we unfortunately won’t delve deeper into the context, tradition and the different aesthetic, thematic development (movement) of specific poets and their periods. To a significant extent, the interpretive distance from our largely Asian cultural referent and ‘location’ will cause us to miss some of the greater nuances and specificities of the poem, but we trust that as lovers of language, we will be able to distil and approximate some ‘meaning’ from the poems.

We hope that these simple, feeble efforts will help stimulate and encourage the reading, appreciation and ultimately the writing of poetry, especially among fellow Malaysians – our chief audience, but obviously all are more than welcomed to share their love and expertise of poetry here. In fact, we would love to have as many comments as possible from anybody who loves poetry, and look forward to reading and learning from the ideas and discussions put forward.

Please do leave any of your valued thoughts and comments for our posts. :)

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, my name is Rita Vega. i am mexicane. I teach at the university in my country and a like de poetrys and poesy. I found your blog and i liked so much.

a send to you
a poem:

sí, lo confieso, soy adicta
a los cometas, lunas, astros;
padezco insuificiencia terrenal.

2:43 AM, May 14, 2007  
Blogger dreameridiot said...

Thanks Rita for warming our hearts with our kind words. Sometimes, we don't know whether doing this blog is worth it, so thanks for reminding us again of what poetry means, and that they are life-giving words that inspire the eternal in us all in our daily earthly lives.

Cheers! :)

10:21 AM, May 14, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Poetistas, I'm Orin MSH writing to tell how impressed i am with your collective efforts at fostering Malaysian writing in English. One question, how can i contribute poetry to the site?

10:59 AM, December 21, 2008  
Blogger dreameridiot said...

Thanks for your kind comments. Do pardon me, however, because I'm not quite sure how you would like to contribute.

Would it be offering your own poems for us to look at and discuss on this blog? If that is the case, may I ask then, since I I am not familiar with your work, are you a published poet? If yes, you could e-mail a few of your poems (stating where they were published) to the present blog administrator, Leon Wing. We do not usually solicit poems from people, so you will probably be the first then. Instead we pick up published poems that we have read and liked, and then discuss them on this blog.

This blog is therefore not actually involve in fostering Malaysian writing in English. The blog that does that is Malaysian Poetic Chronicles, which puts up both fiction and poetry.

http://themalaysianpoeticchronicles.blogspot.com/

It is also run by Leon Wing, to whom people can send unpublished work to be put up. Malaysian Poetic Chronicles serve as s starting point for people to have their work noticed, read or even critiqued in order that they may improve further. Leon does the selection and editing process for the works that are submitted.

Puisipoesy, in a way, is a kind of 'companion' blog, as it were, where Malaysians who have yet to encounter poetry, or have limited reading of poetry to further their interests. It's like a meeting place or resource page where people (target audience, mainly Malaysians, but all are welcome) can not only read poetry but read the interpretation of the poem, and to discuss their own ideas and reading of the poem. A kind of online poetry, reading club, if you will, to encourage the reading and appreciation of poetry.

If you would like to become a blog contributor here - picking poems and discussing their craft and meaning, we would like to know firstly if you are Malaysian, because we would to encourage Malaysians who read poetry to share their understanding of poetry with others. If you are Malaysian, you can e-mail Leon, and send him a draft post for him to have a look first. We've featured a few guests posts on this blog before.

Leon's email can be found at Malaysian Poetic Chronicles, under submission.

Thanks. :)

6:09 PM, December 21, 2008  
Anonymous Maggi Malaysian said...

Thank you for sharing. This is one of my favourite sites for poetry. It is insightful and resourceful.

8:33 PM, August 10, 2009  
Blogger dreameridiot said...

Thanks for your kind comment. I hope more Malaysians like yourself pick up the joys of reading poetry. :)

9:52 PM, August 11, 2009  
Blogger aNtoLoGie said...

Hi,,,
Introduce!
I'am a blogger by poetry lovers from Indonesia

2:54 AM, May 20, 2010  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a wonderful site! I used to work in Indonesia and Malaysia and appreciate just how much appetite there is for word-loving connoisseurs out there. I hope to get back to you soon.

5:44 AM, June 11, 2011  
Blogger Luigi Coppola said...

Hi there. Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading the poems and criticisms on the blog, especially for Gin and Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying, both of which I had not read before.

Keep up the great work!

Luigi
www.luigicoppolapoetry.blogspot.co.uk

11:40 PM, January 20, 2017  
Blogger samsa said...

Kopi Hitam Juga Bermanfaat Bagi Ayam

Manfaat Susu Beruang Kaleng Untuk Ayam

4:07 PM, May 16, 2020  

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