Bard for life

Lionel Scherer, Kosal Khiev and Vatthina Tola talk Allen Ginsberg, sleeping in peculiar places and the great responsibility that comes with being a poet

“The very word ‘poetry’ repels people. Why is that? Because of what schools have done to it. The slam gives it back to the people… We need people to talk poetry to each other. That’s how we communicate our values, our hearts, the things that we’ve learned that make us who we are.” – Marc Smith

Bored with conventional poetry recitals so snobbish almost no one in the audience was listening, Chicago-born Marc Kelly Smith – a self-described socialist who had been writing verse since the age of 19 – executed a dramatic ‘up yours’ to the literary establishment in 1984 with the launch of the world’s first poetry slam. A departure from the naval-gazing norm of genteel readings, the slam injected an element of fierce competition: poets performed; cheering (or booing) onlookers acted as judge, jury and execution. In September 1992, when Smithsonian magazine covered the poetry slam phenomenon, the reporter described Smith as “almost visionary on the need to rescue poetry from its lowly status in the nation’s cultural life”. The spoken word revolution had begun.

It would take a further three decades for the movement sparked by ‘Slam Papi’ to reach Cambodian shores, but when it did – in the form of US deportee Kosal Khiev, a Cambodia-born convict who discovered poetry while serving time for attempted murder – it carried with it the necessary tinder to light a new, more local revolution. In a culture where creative self-expression remains largely an alien concept, three international poets are uniting for a very special performance that, they hope, could hold the key to unlocking a nation.

On February 14, Kosal will take the stage at Oscar’s 51 alongside two fellow poets: Ucoc Lai, a Cambodian returnee from France, and Lionel Scherer, who describes himself as ‘Franco French’. More than a reading, more even than a ‘regular’ slam, the night is billed as a ‘four-set live performance with three international artists, each with their own universe/style and language’. The Advisor meets Lionel Scherer, Kosal Khiev and aspiring local poet Vatthina Tola to talk Allen Ginsberg, sleeping in peculiar places and the great responsibility that comes with being a bard.

Lionel: I was just a normal kid, but one day poetry started pulling at me. I was 13 and doing my homework. Suddenly it was like a rush in my head and I started writing. It was a gift which came out of nowhere; I was just the vector. I didn’t know what to do with it; I was actually disturbed. I went to my parents and said: ‘I have to read this to you.’ And they started crying! What is happening? I was just a lonely boy in the countryside; my parents didn’t allow me to go out in case I became a bad guy. Because of the writing, I started to meet people: it was the end of the ’70s, still rock ‘n’ roll, but punk was coming.

I came from a part of France where the first thing you learn is depression, because it’s grey all the time. You had a choice: work at the beer factory or at the steel factory. I needed to escape. Because of the singing in rock bands and writing, I had a chance to go to Paris to work for a music production company, as a sound engineer/producer, but I was like a lion in a cage. So I moved to New York City in 1990, where I met Allan Ginsberg through a friend. But his beat poetry readings and recitals weren’t like the energy we are producing now. In New York, I was walking the streets, spending the night driving around in taxis, sleeping in crazy places: I was looking for poetic circumstances.

In 2000, I ran into an old friend: a tramp we would always see at parties, speaking text and asking for “money for my talk”. It was at La Coupole, near Montparnasse. He said: “We are the slum movement – come join us!” Two weeks later, I was on stage. The movement began in Chicago, where people were bored of poetry readings: Marc Smith went to New York and was putting poets in a boxing ring, with boxing gloves, but they weren’t boxing each other. It was a verbal battle, just like the troubadours in the south of France. The scene exploded!

By 2000, we were putting on the Printemps de Poets in France: 15 people in cars, touring over 10 days between libraries, cultural centres, theatres, festivals, streets, parks…. I was getting back the punk energy of the beginning with this free talking – whatever you wanted. There was the woman from my bakery; the wife of my policeman; Ucoc’s child; old junkies; old poets; old actors; young singers… It was a fantastic energy – exactly the same energy as punk, but more freedom because there’s no music.

I’m interested in the deconstruction of language. At the beginning I was following rhyme and so on, writing very classical poetry, but after going on stage I went to something more accidental: improvisation. Freedom and transience – like trance music, you know when you take LSD or mushrooms? You go through the borders of Death and then it opens into another field. This is what poetry does, but without the drugs. Dali is my influence; Dali and Surrealism. I have spent a lot of time in his village. And I’m interested in the poetry of transcendence: to go through, from one state to another. And the cruelty of Charles Bukowski: sex, drugs… I’m in search of beauty in chaos.

I have two ways of writing. I have a title, but don’t do anything with it; I just travel. The second way is to ramble, to travel around, to lose myself in many stories and then to work on it and write, short but quick. Unification happens on stage. Charles Bukowski; punk; Hunter S Thompson: these are my influences, much more than poets. I like people who are going into poetic states – even if they don’t write poetry. They embrace the world. Where are we now? We want free talking; free energy; free thought; free acting. It’s revolutionary! This is a land of silent speaking, which is why we are doing this event at Oscar’s. I don’t know if Khmer people can take it, but down in Sihanoukville I take whole families to the beach and I throw my text at them – I’m slamming them – but it’s hard…

What makes me happy? Poetry, because it’s a state of mind. You can live in Phnom Penh; you can live in Paris; you can live in Buenos Aires. I was following this line of poetry against all the powers – and I’m still here. Looking for poetic circumstances, it’s hard work. In my country, when people say: ‘Oh, you are a poet,’ it’s very negative. It means you have no sense of reality. This is not true. As poets, we need to embrace reality to find ways through: poetry is the path of transcendence. This is what I have felt since I was 13 years old; now I’m 50 and I want to continue. To find a way through poetry into outer space: this, for me, is poetry.

I’ve known Ucoc for a long time and when we saw Kosal perform in a slam at Show Box we realised he was a brother; another trans-global poet. We are living our art and have special stories. The energy we put on stage is global, whether the language is French, English or Khmer. It’s touching. It’s very cool to do an open mic but this guy, Kosal, has a the recent elections: they cannot talk about it. We want to show people here that it’s possible to be a Kosal, to be a Ucoc, to be a Lionel: to be yourself – and free, in mind and in speech. Do you have energy? Open it, for creative purposes. That’s living. In open mics and poetry readings, we don’t usually have the time to show who we really are. We want to show who we are: most importantly the two Cambodian sons, Kosal and Ucoc, coming back and living here, one having experienced the difficulty of exile. Think of what you see on stage: the physical side of them; their energy; their intensity; their whispered cries.

Kosal: Poetry takes young Cambodians out of the box; out of what society says they should do and be. Breaking that containment, to say: ‘Hey, you can be anything you want to be – and the most important thing is to be yourself.’ It’s a thing of beauty to behold when I see this younger generation and that’s why I do what I do, hoping young people see it and it breaks that mental barrier: ‘If he can do it, I can do it too.’ It’s different when they see a foreigner doing it: of course he’s doing it; he’s a foreigner! Poetry is an alien concept in Cambodia, so when they realise I’m Khmer… and we have a French-Khmer, too. We have two different backgrounds and were raised in two very different environments because of what happened during the war, when so many families were forced to join the Diaspora. What’s interesting now is that they’re coming back because we have so much going on. There are so many layers: politically, culturally, artistically; the influence of foreign Khmers – the Diaspora – coming back and bringing their own influences with them. What I hope young Cambodians take away from this is that anything is possible. That’s what creativity is. The creative world is limitless – you can do or be anything. Why can’t we apply that in this world, be it business or everyday living? Why can’t we say: ‘These barriers are holding us back. Let’s break them! Let’s create new possibilities!’ I just crack open that space and let all the ugly stuff out. It’s a transformation: turning the ugly stuff into something beautiful. I’m giving people glimpses of who I am, in different stages.

Vatthina: I’ve seen Lionel perform twice; he was so passionate! Even though I couldn’t understand it all because it was in French, the way he said it you could appreciate it. It drew my attention. That’s what I love about spoken word rather than poetry; it’s not just about the words, but the way you project them. When you perform, what you want is to recall the memory of how you felt when you wrote that piece. When I do my pieces, what I really want – and it’s the best feeling in my life, doing spoken word – is when you look out at the audience and you know they’re feeling the same thing that you feel. What I want people to know from my pieces is how different it is for me, as a local. As a Khmer, the culture is so restrictive. It’s a sad thing to say but the truth is that we are born in a place that won’t allow us to be who we want to be or do what we want to do. Hanging out with you guys is great because you think we’re cool, but when old Khmer people look at us, they take our present and compare it with the stereotypical Khmer kids we ‘should’ be. We’re too different. They don’t label us ‘outcasts’, but we hear: ‘What you’re doing isn’t what you should be doing! What you SHOULD do is this…’ That’s why it’s so hard for us. When we’re growing up, people don’t talk much. It’s very hard to find people we can actually talk with, for any reason – whatever the topic. Nobody is willing to listen to you, much less to understand you. They don’t even try; they don’t want to. So when I write, I write about that. We don’t get the credit we should. After the first time I saw Kosal perform, I stayed up all night watching his videos. He’s so inspiring: the fact he’s Khmer and the fact he has a sad past. These intriguing things drew me into writing. I feel it’s my duty to break free of my own shackles. You need to inspire people. There are so many kids my age who have the same problem of being frustrated because they live in a culture where they have no one to talk to and no one is willing to understand them. For 18 years, I had to wake up and pretend to be happy; pretend to be someone who isn’t me. Now that I’m able to break away a little bit, I just want to enjoy myself. The main thing I write about is growing up in this place. I don’t know why, but if I were to write about a happy topic that wouldn’t feel natural. When I’m happy is when I’m around you guys; around my friends, people to share with. The best thing that ever happened to me was when a friend cried at my performance. Whatever it is that breaks these shackles, directly or indirectly, is because of the foreigners who come here. I study at law school and some of my friends and I won a competition and got to go to Portugal for one week, with everything paid for. I went home and told my parents and their reaction was: ‘Yes, good.’ That was it! Then I come to Show Box to tell my friends and everybody comes over to shake my hand and hug me. The reason I get so confused and upset is why is my own blood not supporting me? But no matter how hateful it is that I hate how my parents react, I can still understand why. My dad caused a lot of problems for me when I was younger and I hate that guy, but at the same time I understand why he does it. His dad was murdered by the Khmer Rouge when my dad was six or seven. When a guy that young never received love from his father, how can he know what love is and project it or even understand the feeling? So many young Cambodians get upset because their parents won’t let them go out, but try to understand why: they’re still traumatised; still scared of society. That’s why so many of us Khmer kids are so angry all the time; so frustrated all the time. If I didn’t have a punch bag at my house right now, I’d be punching people in the street! That’s what’s so good about people like Kosal: they inspire us to express ourselves creatively. He’s the guy who got me into it and he’s Khmer. I’m so proud of him!

WHO: Kosal Khiev, Ucoc Lai & Lionel Scherer
WHAT: International poetry performance
WHERE: Oscar’s 51, #29 Street 51
WHEN: 9:30pm February 14
WHY: “We need people to talk poetry to each other. That’s how we communicate our values, our hearts, the things that we’ve learned that make us who we are” – Marc Smith