The Malaysian Insight

A POETRY-WRITING challenge to protest the Perikatan Nasional government and the state of emergency has received an overwhelming number of entries, its organisers said.

Puisi Darurat (Emergency Poems) took place on Saturday on Twitter, featuring original poetry expressing frustration at the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Organiser Karim Mohd said the poems were still being retweeted and shared on social media with the hashtag #PuisiDarurat.

“The campaign has achieved its goal to get the community to write poetry as a medium to express their anger and frustration and convey the people’s messages to the government.

“Some are disappointed, sad and upset and some are even cursing. The poems are an avenue for them to express their feelings.

“We want the people to release their anger the proper way. We have achieved our goals,” Karim told The Malaysian Insight.

One of the participants had even been warned to delete her poem entitled “Kejam” (Cruel), he said.

In a since deleted tweet, the participant said the warning was sent in a private message from a government-linked group but did not elaborate.

Karim said this merely meant that the campaign had achieved its goal of getting the government’s attention.

He was glad that both Malay and English writers had responded to the challenge.

Co-organiser Farahin Wahid, of civil society group Gerak Malaysia, said the campaign ended with the live recitation of parliamentary poems on Facebook on Saturday.

Farahin said Malaysia Muda, writer Zoul Yazix and activist Ali Adnan helped to publicise the campaign and encourage people to write poetry.

There are many Covid-19-related issues to protest, n such as poverty, mental stress and the fatigue of frontline workers, he said, but physical demonstrations are not possible now.

“There are those among us who want to go out into the streets but that is not possible in the current situation.

“So we are organising this campaign to tell the government there are people who are angry and disappointed and want change,” he said.

Farahin said he did not expect poets and writers to be interested in sharing their poems in the campaign.

But he is heartened to discover that poetry writing is not exclusive to the literary types, and that anyone can do it.

“Many people from different backgrounds wrote poems,” he said. – July 21, 2021.