Rhyme of the times

Much of the crowd gathered at The Bookworm worried modern poetry was a dying art until they saw Australian champion slam poet Luka "Lesson" Haralampou, 28, light up the bookstore's literary festival on Monday night. Lesson's visit to Beijing was part of his prize when he clinched the Australian title as best slam poet last year. The enigmatic performer pleased the small but lively crowd with his slam poetry - a beat recital of lyrical poetry rooted in rap, still in its infancy in China. Lesson is a writer who pushes the boundaries of poetry, music, acting and activism. He believes poetry must be read, but also must be felt in order to impact and transform its audience. Lesson's first album, Please Resist Me, and debut book, The Confluence, are slated for release this year.

 

Vibrant, vivacious verses

Taking center stage in a dimly lit room full of fans of the written and spoken word, Lesson cut a figure of a hip-hop-inspired Shakespeare. His eyes closed and shoulder-length hair untamed from its usual bun, he recited verses of love and breakups, emphatically pounding his chest.

His fists clenched, his words drip with spite against racism and colonization, occasionally paying homage to his Greek ancestry. This wasn't a one-man show however, with Lesson at one point calling upon his audience to chant letters of the alphabet.

"A!" they called out to him, prompting him to shoot back: "Apple, aardvarks and alligators/An adlib ace, an Adidas appreciator/An astrophysicist as apt as Astro Boy/My apostrophes and asterisks act as asteroids!"

His words mix poetic insight and grounded activism, revealing his eloquence, determination and underlying humor.

"Slam transforms poetry from words packed in boring, dusty rooms that nobody understands into an exciting night out," explained Lesson, praising the genre for setting off a poetic sphere often maligned as hermetic and inaccessible.

Slam is a get together where poets use words in order to win a competition, though not at the humiliation of their opponents. "The prize of the original events was a can of baked beans, just so it was made clear that people weren't fighting for fame and greed. It's all about making poetry more entertaining for the wider public. Poetry wins in the end," explained Lesson.

Reminiscent of 1989 film Dead Poets Society, the poetry slam movement emerged during roughly the same period thanks to the efforts of blue-collar Chicago worker Marc Smith.

"[Poetry slam] has made poets clearer and more aware of what other people are going through in their lives. It is bringing it all back to the ground," Lesson said, adding how the art form is taking off worldwide from Canada to Germany, and from France to South Africa.

Innovators of inspiration

Lesson wrote his first verse at the age of eight, but was a late bloomer when it came to exposure to rap music. "English was one of my better subjects at school and I was writing short stories here and there from a young age. I wrote some songs with my brother, but I didn't write a rap song until I was 20, which turned out to be about an ex-girlfriend," he recalled with a laugh.

However, it wasn't until a TV show infected Lesson with the stage performance bug that his career really took off. "I saw Def Jam Poetry [an American poetry slam TV show] and I just fell in love with it. I watched the videos on YouTube over and over again, and started practicing it in my hometown of Brisbane three years ago," said Lesson, whose parents were among tens of thousands of Greek migrants who settled in Australia in the 1950s.

Lesson penned Athena in a nostalgic nod to his Greek roots, but sources inspiration from a variety of figures, including American gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur and poets such as Khalil Gibran and Anne Sexton.

Pure poetry packing precision

Rhyming is at the essence of Lesson's trade, and the poet finds solace in the void of hotel rooms, trains crowded with oblivious commuters, planes and cars.

"I don't necessarily have a technique. I write from the heart, from a very emotional place," he explained. "Humanity and the way we go about things inspires me. The way we interact, the mistakes that we make, the ruts that we all fall into and how we overcome obstacles also inspires me. The world is always feeding me and it can be overwhelming at times."

An indigenous studies major and lecturer in the subject at Melbourne's Monash University, Lesson's first poems were politically motivated by the plight of Aboriginal people in Australia, along with treatment of migrants and refugees. His writing matured with time, and the poet channeled his personal identity as a Greek-Australian into "utilizing hip-hop and poetry as a form of self-determination."

As director of the Centre for Poetics and Justice in Melbourne, Lesson teaches Aboriginal children to read, write and rhyme as a way of preserving their own languages and cultural traditions. "Writing and performing can be a very transformative experience for people when they are suffering," he explained.

"I know a lot of people wouldn't be happy about this comment, but I don't think a poet unto themselves who doesn't help the world in some way is of real value to society."

For now, Lesson is focused on soaking up the culture he now finds himself immersed in here in China. "If people here are into hip-hop and rap, I'd say slam poetry probably is happening somewhere, even if it's not in public," he hinted.

To find out more about Luka Lesson, visit: http://lukalesson.com/ or see him perform on Saturday, March 17 at 2Kolegas.

 

 

Excerpt from May your pen grace the page by Luka 'Lesson' Haralampou

 

May your pen grace the page at the same pace as your brain

May your gray matter from now on no longer be grey

May you mean every word that you say

And may writing your rhymes be the way that you pray

May your pen express upon the page every feeling you're in

May your white page - Yang

Love your black pen - Yin

May the ball in your ballpoint roll 'cause that's the point of the ball

And if we can't make our points then what's the point of it all?