Chinese Canadian Chris Tse won “Poetry Slam” in Vancouver, BC, in December 2009 with this performance.
Poetry Slam helps keep alive "blood, sweat, and tears poetry delivered live inches from your face," as 2009 National Poetry Slam co-director Henry Sampson put it.
Whether Tse really speaks with blunt eloquence to "what makes young believers tick," as Marty Duren argues, this is a fine work and more than worth the time spent listening to it.
Angelica Mesiti's 11-minute, "silent video work entitled [Rapture (silent anthem)]" of "sea of ecstatic young faces" at a hard rock and metal rock concert won Australia's $20,000 Blake Prize for Religious Art and Spirituality for 2009.
The judges, whose decision was unanimous, said:
Filmed from a concealed position beneath the stage at a rock concert, Mesiti’s camera looks out at a sea of ecstatic young faces. In a unanimous decision, the judges praised it for its beauty, emotional intensity and technical virtuosity. An enigmatic work that operates on many levels, Rapture depicts the joy of being alive while also hinting at the darker aspects of religious emotion.
In an interview with Ashleigh Wilson of The Australian, Mesiti said:
I was just interested in these notions of worship and ecstasy and transcendence and where they're actually found in a contemporary setting.
One of the most prestigious Australian art competitions, the Blake has for 55 years been awarded a prize for works which, according to the Blake Society about page, "explore the subject of religious awareness and spirituality." The Blake invites an "open, personal and idiosyncratic response, so much so that it has earned the criticism, ire and sometimes applause of critics and the public alike. After all, what is religious art?"
John Watson won the Blake Poetry Prize for Four Ways to Approach the Numinous {.pdf].
Diane Coulter's sculpture "Cousin Elizabeth NT" won Blake Prize for Human Justice.
Grant Stevens' video "In the Beyond" won the Award for Emerging Artists.
The awards are controversial.
Christopher Allen, The Australian's national art critic, said of the winner: “Ecstasy is cheap," and termed the show as a whole "fairly lacklustre.”
While Blake Society chairman the Rev. Rod Pattenden, undeterred, said, “Each creative work makes a response to a sense of the spirit within the complex and sometimes conflicting nature of contemporary culture.”
We've seen a sample of Mesiti's video [which we hope to be able to share], and side with Pattenden.
From the Beaitudes Society:
"Abide With Me" was written by Anglican divine Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847) while he was dying of tuberculosis. He composed it after his final service and died two weeks later. He also wrote this tune for it, although it's usually sung to "Eventide," composed by William H. Monk in 1861.
H.F. Lyte's poem "Abide With Me," read with text.
Great Britain's Christian Voice proudly trumpets how its pressure silenced Patrick Jones' otherwise little-noticed reading from his book of poetry, Darkness is Where the Stars are.
Termed fundamentalist thugs by a member of the British Parliament, the group's web site reports:
A national bookstore chain have cancelled a reading of obscene and blasphemous poetry due to happen tonight after a 24-hour campaign by a Christian prayer and lobby group.
Waterstones were due to host Patrick Jones' poetry reading in their Cardiff store tonight, but less than 24 hours after Christian Voice members began contacting the store and Waterstones' top brass, the event has been pulled.
...
Just the knowledge that we were on our way has put the fear of God into the opposition.
Yes, the book's material is, in the author's words, harrowing, and the British, like most Americans, are confident adults can make their own decisions about whether or not to read it or hear it read. What they are refusing to tolerate, however, is the suppression of free speech embodied in cancellation under pressure of the Waterstones' reading.
Terry Sanderson of the Guardian writes:
Members of the Welsh Assembly have weighed in to condemn Waterstones, calling the cancellation a violation of the right to free speech. Now, Jones, will read his poems in a room at the Welsh Assembly on the invitation of Liberal Democrat assembly member Peter Black.
...
The whole ballyhoo has also brought an invitation for Patrick Jones to speak at the Hay literary festival next year. ...
Thuggery in this case gets its just deserts.
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