Happy Mondays

For the first Monday of this rainy month, I was unusually willing to get up my lazy ass and travel all the way to Quezon City despite the rain. It was the re-launch of Happy Mondays, an open-mic poetry night that gives the opportunity for young, up-and-coming and amateur poets to recite their poems to a crowd who shares the same love of words as they do, unbound by the fear of rejection and criticism. Established poets are regular spectators and readers in the events as well. My friend Gel was one-half of the administering team, so of course Tisa and I went to show our support. Personally, I was really looking forward to it because I've never been to a poetry reading before, and I've always wanted to. I remember even telling my friend about this a long time ago, and he said he'll take me to one because he's always in one of those things. And (not at all) surprisingly, we bumped into each other at Happy Mondays. Talented writer, he is.

My favorite reader would have to be Gemino H. Abad, otherwise known as Jimmy Abad, the man in the red shirt above. His poem was about waking up with "pebbles in my pocket" and how his day would go. It was my favorite, of all the poems read that night. A line went, "(something, something....) who would empty my pocket of stones?" Gaah, I should have written it down. It was beautiful.

Though the event started out with very few people and readers, the turn-out was pretty fantastic. By the end of the night, the place was overflowing with people and a total of 20 readers and performers took to the stage. This, despite the storm that started that night. Imagine the event producers' gratefulness to the people for braving the bad, angry rains just to be there.

To read more about the event, including the line-up for that night, you can read the blog entry from their site here. The next installment of Happy Mondays will be on the first Monday of September. If you're interested to participate, as a reader or performer, you can visit their site http://www.happymondaysph.com to register.

Let us show support for our young poets. Stay connected with Happy Mondays, and like/follow them in the following sites:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/happymondaysph
Facebook: http://facebook.com/happymondaysph