Bali high for writers

Thanks to the National Commission for Culture & the Arts or NCCA, I managed to represent the Philippines in the fifth Ubud Writers & Readers Festival held from Oct. 14 to 20 in the island of Bali, Indonesia.

Last year, the strong Pinoy representation included poets Ed Maranan and Angelo Suarez from Manila as well as Reine Arcache Melvin from Paris. This year, Merlinda Bobis from Australia and Cesare A.X. Syjuco were also officially invited. With Cesare in Bali, why, we would have given the Katzenjammer Kids a run for their rupiah — maybe beyond a wholesome animation feature.

But my compadre had to beg off at the last minute. With his already calendared participation curling up and away like incense smoke, so did the expectation of a knock-‘em-dead series of performances by the Syjuco Famil — meaning the better half who’s Jean Marie and their talented, lovely daughters Trix and Maxine. For some reason, mi amiga Merlinda was also a no-show.

Alone to carry the colors for the red, white, blue and yellow, I lost no time in familiarizing myself with the venues for combat. For writers’ festivals are often nothing less than drag-down affairs, where competition is intense for audiences, agents, booksellers and buyers — not to mention free drinks.

Calling cards are whipped out like weapons, and tags like “the first black Buddhist nun” or “the Dutch expert on Haitian voodoo” spice up the introductions onstage. Camp followers actually pay to get into the sessions. Oh, let’s be circumspect: they’re not groupies but lovers of literature who fly in to soak up not so much the sun and surf alone in a paradisiacal setting, but the lush trade in words from among practitioners of the word.

Such a festival as Ubud’s incorporates everything to do with the written and spoken word, not just poetry reading or storytelling but sessions on such wide-ranging topics as “Globalization & the Clash of Cultures: When Britney Meets Bin Laden” or “Pleasures of the Tongue: Food and Story.”

Panel discussions that seem to reek of overly academic focus — “Feast or Famine: The Politics of Food” or “Pluralism and Religious Tolerance in Indonesia” — are counterpointed by more engaging, down-to-earth themes such as “The Rice of Harmony” or “Evoking a Sense of Place” or the forthright “The Future of Reading: Writing for Young People.”       

Other attractively packaged forums included “Dreaming, Myth & Magic;”“Poetry of the Body;” “Mindscapes: How the Natural World Affects Us;” “Seeking the Divine in a Hostile World;” and “Endangered Species: Writing Creatively About the Environment.” These sessions feature three to five authors and a designated moderator. They may take an hour or two, depending on the number of participants, with the paying audience expected to weigh in with questions or their own insights at the end of the individual presentations.           

Then of course there are the big-ticket special events involving the festival’s superstars: “In Conversation with Vikram Seth (author of the bestselling A Suitable Boy);” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Literary Lunch” (with author John Berendt); and the “Sofitel Exclusive Dinner with John Berendt” (‘... as the guest of honor in conversation under the stars and palm trees’), over a four-course dinner. 

An International Publishing Forum and a workshop on “How to Get Your Non-Fiction Published” are among the activities addressing the practical side of authorship. Other workshops draw in anywhere from eight to 20 participants for three-hour sessions on such thematic concerns as “Meditation & Memoir” and “Poetry and the Moon.” (This last I conducted at Indus, a fine-dining restaurant with a gorgeous ridge-side view of a verdant gully, river, and coconut plantation across, and which served as one of the regular venues, apart from providing the book-selling space.)

Poetry readings grouped participants into sets of four to six. The first one I joined was “Poetry & Afternoon Tea” conducted at an open-sided pavilion of traditional Balinese architecture. The setting was but one of the fetching features of the sprawling residence and gardens of photographer Rio Helmi — and where lotus ponds framed the gamelan music provided by a couple of musicians seated on the lawn under a temple tree.

Performance Poetry was conducted in two separate venues, separate from “The Better Read Than Dead Poetry Slam.” Another enjoyable reading was a highlight of the “Carnival Street Party at Jalan Goutama” — where Saturday-night vibes coursed through a narrow road bedecked with buntings and crowded with resident kids and tourists taking in the Balinese and dragon dances replete with fireworks.

I joined the seasoned spoken word performer Benito Di Fonzo of Sydney and Martin Jankowski of Berlin in a version of a pub crawl set up by the organizers, which had us reading three-four poems each to diners and barflies at the Pignou di Penyu French resto and Devilicious Warung & Gruill, respectively. We were well applauded and appreciated, and the camaraderie was deliquescent over large bottles of Bintang beer. At Devilicious, capping the night was a musical routine of original pop songs in German performed by Martin on the guitar together with his namesake, translator and travel journalist Martin Amanshauser of Austria.

Memorable too was listening to the young and beauteous poet-dancer Tishani Doshi of Madras rendering her svelte “love-poems-that-aren’t” from her first collection, Countries of the Body. Forthcoming from Bloomsbury is her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers.

At a villa dinner hosted by festival patron Warrick Purser, a cocktails tete-a-tete with Amsterdam poet Maria van Daalen led to the discovery of minimal degrees of separation. She knew the lovely Hagar Peeters with whom I had read in the Poetry Africa fest in Durban in 2005. Maria was preparing a tribute to Dutch poet Hans Verhagen, now 70 and still kicking despite his enviable lifestyle, and whom I recalled to knock constantly on my door at Mayflower Apartments in Iowa City way back in 1978, for a toke or a swig of whisky.

Maria too had been in the International Writers Program in Iowa, in fact went on to stay for two years for the university’s writing workshop, and had thus become fast friends with long-time Iowa hands from Asia such as Peter and Mary Nazareth (he instituted a course on Elvis Presley) and our dear sister Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas.

Small world gets smaller and more seductively intimate in writers’ fests such as Ubud’s, thanks to the inspired vision and leadership of Janet De Neefe, originally from Australia, but who has since married into and become a stalwart of Balinese culture and society. After only five years of resolve, already she has turned her baby, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, into a diverse, well-organized and professionally run exemplar. Harper’s Bazaar, UK, has already hailed it as “one of the top six writers’ festivals in the world.”

On the last day, continuing fortune spelled the privilege of a free afternoon spent at Sayan Terrace Resort, where my large traditional cottage overlooked an infinity pool that gushed water to lace the view of green valley. A Balinese deep-tissue massage on the second-floor balcony, attended by breezes while the countries of the body were lathered with lotus oil — to the music of Jarrett’s “Koln Concert” from my iTunes — may have been the pluperfect antidote to a possible diarrhea of words discussed and heard throughout the five days of the fest.

Detoxification was momentary, however, as the closing night party would end the evening. But as I communed with panoramic sunset, an SMS invite came from festival moderator and journalist Shalini Giddomai of Kenya: Come and join the gang for a private dinner at Cafe Wayan.

My resort bonhomie-buddy Shelley Kenigsberg of Sydney — a freelance editor and writer who had attended the fest since year one — and Rasna Warah, Kenyan newspaper columnist and anthology editor, joined us at the lush grounds of Shelley’s excellent choice for a farewell dinner together.

We missed the company of bestselling memoirist Faith Adiele of the USA, of Nigerian/Finnish heritage; she had to fly off early that day. Conversation over dinner and drinks became so extended that when we caught up with the farewell party at the Blanco Renaissance Museum grounds, it was all over but the garden sweeping. Why, a rapper had even performed last, we were told.

A pity, as I failed to say goodbye to many friends who would now toggle memory. The setting, too, would stay in the mind. Don Antonio Blanco was a Spanish painter of eccentric character and tastes, whose erotic portraits have joined the collections of such celebrities as pop superstar Michael Jackson.

The Museum’s palace-like main building has been turned into a gallery, only part of which I could take in that midnight. Before the grand steps that led to this cornucopia of distinctive art was a 30-foot-tall sculptural icon of marble — a blown-up copy of the artist’s signature, thus gaining the claim to be the world’s largest free-standing signature.

As signatures go, in books, program brochures and Balinese gardens, Blanco then had the last say for this wordfeast. And his version of a temple gives us reason to return to Ubud.