Second Saturdays Reading #6 Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, played host to August’s Second Saturdays, which happily coincided with Singapore’s National Day. As was our custom, generous guests and readers brought a sumptuous spread of food, and many of us proudly wore red and white in honor of the occasion. We had our biggest crowd yet: 39 guests and readers, including two children! After tucking into various dishes, we kicked off the evening with playwright and director Marcus Yi, who showed the musical theater side of his genius by performing two of his original compositions for voice and keyboard: “Little Lovable Pyromaniac” and “Would You Rather Date a Werewolf or a Vampire?” We then had British poet Leisha Beardmore treat us to two of her poems: ‘To Pluto, the Former Planet’ and ‘An Ode to the Former Woman’. Performance poet Nichole Acosta read two of her poems with aplomb; the first piece was about Singapore and titled ‘Exotic’, while the second was called ‘Sisters’, which Nichole has also performed as a video poem. Next we had cartoonist and filmmaker Colin Goh, who read a National day-themed piece he had written for a previous National Day called ‘The Marikita’. Following him was his other half Yen Yen Woo, who read ‘Snapshots of Singapore’, while Nichole Acosta read ‘New York Dreams’ in a duo performance. San Francisco-born Kristina Tom then read an extract from her witty novel-in-progress tentatively titled ‘Turtle Mountain’. Architect Christopher Chew then introduced a literary translation project that he has been working on. Called ‘Singapore Noveller’, it is a collection of stories that describe early 20th century Singapore written by Danish poet laureate Johannes Wilhelm Jensen; Actress Kiat Sing Teo followed up with an excerpt from it entitled ‘Mrs. D’Almeida’. Our featured poet Jason Koo, founder of literary nonprofit Brooklyn Poets then read some of his award-wining poetry. From his second collection ‘America’s Favorite Poem’ he read ‘A Natural History of My Name’, ‘Model Minority’ and ‘Struck from the Float Forever held in Solution’; his first collection ‘Man on Extremely Small Island’ was awarded the De Novo Poetry Prize and the Asian American Writers Workshop Members’ Choice Award for the best Asian American book of 2009). We closed the evening as we began with a musical tribute to Singapore. Singer/Actress Jeane Reveendran and Actress/ Producer Elizabeth Lazan brought the house down with a performance that was absolutely adorable! They performed a rap called ‘Ode to SingapuRA’. Hope you enjoy the video of this rap/song! Oh, and our Kickstarter for Singapore Literature Festival in NYC ends in less than 24 hours, so please donate if you can. Thanks! https://kickstarter/projects/1932831070/singapore-literature-festival-in-nyc
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 04:33:47 +0000
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