On Friday we went to a Talk by Marc Nair a poet and photographer in Singapore. Marc Nair has written many poetry books and has collaborated on many art forms with various artists. He has also started putting his spoken word poetry to music transforming them into songs which he performed for us. He also read some of his spoken word poetry my favourite one being Pan-Asian.
Marc Nair said that he often writes ‘against the city’ from a wide variety of persona’s or his “othered self.”
“Why would you want to do anything that everyone else does?” This was something that I realised when Marc Nair mentioned it. These days everyone follows along and does things because everyone else is doing it. Why do we do this? Do we fear being left behind?
Writing is all about how you access the frame, collaborating in different ways and responding to the pieces of others is an interesting approach to artwork. Simple questions can unlock narratives just like a small observed image can bring out a moment. Something that I learnt and was reiterated was that the process is critical in a project. Something that I went in thinking was that poetry has to be about deep things, after the talk I realised it can be about anything and that it is really effective when you reference things and have ideas that symbolise something deeper.
Really like your post, very interesting ideas and I liked reading about how your ideas changed from before and after the talk. I would love to see more of your opinion on Marc Nair as a speaker and as a writer. Did he do anything that made him stand out from the other speakers in writers fortnight? In comparison to the first speaker how do you think he interacted with the audience differently to Steve Dawson? You said that ‘Pan-Asian’ was your favourite of his poems, what was it that you liked about his writing? Anything you felt you could relate to? Was there anything you didn’t understand of didn’t like?
I think that my opinion on Marc Nair is that he is a very interesting person with lot’s to share. I think that his interaction with the audience was a lot more interesting than that of Steve Dawson as his poems were quite entertaining. Pan-Asian was my favourite of his spoken word poetry as it was funny with a bit of poking fun at people while staying reasonably respectful and doing it in a way that was acceptable. He did this by making comparisons and also using other ways of mentioning things without explicitly saying them. This is a good skill to allude to things. Since he writes a lot of poems about Singapore and is quite honest it is useful to be able to say what you want in a different and more respectful way, especially in the society that we live in. I couldn’t really relate to his poems however they were very interesting and I liked how they came from different angles and perspectives like he mentioned that he tries to write from different personas.