Henrik Hoeg on Peel Street Poetry Annual Slam 2018:
The 13th anniversary of Peel Street Poetry, the largest English language open mic poetry night in Hong Kong, brought another night of celebration and verse capped off with the annual slam competition. As happens each year, groups of competitors were given a prompt and only 10 minutes to write a poem in response to that prompt. They battled in groups of five, and one person from each group was selected to go through to the final. The poems published here are from the five finalists, either from their first round or from the final in which the prompt was ‘replicate’. This year the judging panel was comprised of last year’s winner Denis Tsoi, the former director of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival Phillipa Milne, and Peel Street Poetry organisers and Cha contributors Akin Jeje and Henrik Hoeg. Bizhan Govindji’s “Musing of a Honey Bee”, featured below, is one of a Finalist of 2018’s Peel Street Poetry Annual Slam.
MUSINGS OF A HONEY BEE
by Bizhan Govindji
For a second, I’m a bee.
Ima be real for a second, Ima tell you all about my raw deal for a second.
See for us to survive, thrive, replicate,
For us to pair into twos, let loose, fornicate,
The one thing we have to do, is make it to reproductive age
And that’s why the big man in the clouds gave us tricks to defend our crowd, get down, keep ourselves around.
But when God was arming us animals with the best of intentions,
I wasn’t first in line or second,
So compared to all the others my powers were lessened,
I’m far less weaponed.
I look around, you know
And I see everyone else armed to the hilt and so in the zone.
Boa constrictors pull you close, crush you slow,
Spiders who lie low but poison you on the sly though,
Mosquitoes with parasites right into your blood flow,
Gorillas’ll get you in a headlock and give you more beats than Kygo,
Sharp teeth for Fido, horns for the rhino, I know I’m a joke.
I’m a joke because when I’m backed into a corner, nearly toast,
All I can give to the enemy on the approach
Is one sad little suicidal bum poke.
Bizhan Govindji‘s journey into writing began with a simple question from a close friend: “Hey Bizhan, if you were going to write something, what would you write about?”. At the time he was in a relationship that he sensed h’d somehow have to end soon, so that night he went home and started writing a piece of what he later realised was Spoken Word poetry. Over the months that followed he started checking out various Spoken Word open mic nights in London, where he is from. He has since then performed at Tongue Fu, The Moth, Word Up, Boomerang and Yuvakutu. In 2018, Bizhan moved to Hong Kong with his company (by day, he works at Ogilvy, in strategy). He can be found at Peel Street Poetry on most Wednesdays, on Instagram @biz99 (mainly photos of food because he is a typical millennial) and @haikusformillennials (mainly his haikus about how awful typical millennials are).