Sat 10/10 @ 7PM
Poet-warriors! Defend or reclaim titles. Challenge old soldiers!
There it is: 2015-2016 Heights Arts poet laureate Meredith Holmes has thrown down the haiku gauntlet hoping to bring out poets for the ultimate battle where words and syllables act as weapons with reputations at stake.
The upcoming Heights Arts’ Haiku Death Match, which takes place 10/10 at the Dobama Theatre, comes just as advertised: a live haiku poetry competition where audience votes determine the Haiku Master.
What a great bait-and-switch. Haiku Death Match sounds like the latest video game craze but instead it’s a celebration of a literary device that leaves egos bruised but bones unbroken. Contenders, who come prepared with an arsenal of haiku, compete in pairs for a given number of rounds while the audience judges the poems by raising color paddles to indicate their vote.
This year’s contenders include Geoff Landis (above) and Kathleen Cerveny (past masters), Jeff Coryell (Cleveland Heights city councilman), Lee Chilcote (managing editor of Fresh Water Cleveland), Ray McNeice (defending Death Match champion), Diane Borsenik, Dominick Duda, Bridget Kriner, Mary Truzillo and Marc Zielinski. Acting as the master of ceremonies will be Joe Valencic.
CoolCleveland talked to Holmes about what poets and audience members can expect from the ultimate showdown that is the Haiku Death Match.
Tell us about what we can expect from the Haiku Death Match.
Heights Art has been doing it about five years, and this will be the fourth one. There are some competitive haiku-match veterans but we have a lot of new people. It combines two things that people normally don’t think ever would exist together: competition and poetry. It’s sort of a cross between a joust and a reality talent show. There are teams of haiku poets and there are brackets. So there will be pairs that will face off and then winners of successive rounds will face off, and the final round will be the two best and then the winner of that match will be the haiku master. It’s fairly raucous and the poets will stop at nothing to win.
In a nutshell, it sort of seems similar to rap battles.
It’s something like that. It’s in that family of oral poetry and audience participation. All of that is a great thing that’s great for poetry. These kind of poetry events are more common and more heavily attended in other countries where poetry is less marginal than here in the United States. In Europe and the Middle East, those places poetry is really a vibrant art form that people participate in much more.
Let’s be honest — most folks would admit they heard of haiku but very few could actually give you the actual definition. Um, that said, how about you give us your definition and that way we can compare it to our definition (wink-wink!).
There are different forms, but in English we know where it’s most recognized is a 17-syllable poem. There are five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, five in the third line. It’s a very obviously brief, focused poem of insight. What’s ironic about having a competition is the haiku is associated with contemplation and calmness. So it’s kind of silly and crazy that this is competitive. Someone summed up haiku by saying it’s not about experience. A haiku poem is the experience. So it attempts to create an insight usually about nature or human nature. It’s a Japanese form that dates to the 16th century or earlier.
Finally, how does the Haiku Death Match epitomize the Heights Arts mission?
It does because it’s encouraging and inviting everybody to enjoy poetry and an art form. It’s kind of participatory. Heights Arts wants to bring poetry into public life as much as possible and wants people to enjoy it in many different forms, and this is one.
Tickets are $15; $10 for Heights Arts members.
heightsarts.org/haiku-death-match/
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118