Arts
‘I’ll keep writing and sharing my poetry’
View(s):When Mishal Mazin paused during his TEDx speech, following it up with “I can’t remember the next line” the audience thought it was part of the act. Several seconds of palpable silence had passed and Mishal was still frozen on stage when the penny dropped.
The 21-year-old did the brave thing- he apologised, admitted that he was “very nervous-this is my first time in front of such a big crowd,” and stepped off the stage.
“I knew I was getting back up the moment I got off stage,” he tells us over an email interview a week later. “My friend Nabeel Gasim did most of the talking before I got back on. One is blessed to have friends who share and support your dreams, and I have been blessed with arguably the best.”
At TEDx, Mishal the poet was not exactly in the form he usually is when performing to more intimate audiences. Some months ago at a Colombo Poets event, he charmed his audience with a poem about a conflicted relationship a son has with his absent father.
At TEDx, confronted with an audience of 500+, assailed by nerves, he lost his train of thought- but then regained the confidence to climb back up on stage and begin again, this time speaking about the materialistic expectations young people are expected to live up to.
Mishal Mazin
Currently a law student (“this is what I used to tell people when they ask me what I do,” he had said during his speech “because it sounds better than saying I’m a writer and am usually broke”), Mishal studied in Dubai, returning to Sri Lanka to sit for his A/Ls.
He has been writing since he was 12 and was inspired to pursue poetry seriously after the “unbelievable” response he received for his poem ‘Kintsukuroi’.
He has written seriously and very frequently since then. On his Facebook page (facebook.com/mishalmazin) you’ll find poems by the dozens.
Does he worry about people passing off his work as their own, especially when he makes them so freely available? “When you’re writing three poems a day, someone stealing one or two every now and then hardly bothers me,” he replies, adding that should he work on a bigger project (such as a novel), then he’d be a lot more cautious.
“I’d peg myself as a free-verse poet,” he notes when asked if his written work was distinctive from his performance poetry. “Spoken word was taught to me by my English teacher at Gateway College and she basically laid the foundation so well that I’m capable of switching from free verse to spoken word with no difficulty.”
| I realize now what Rumi meant when he spoke of soulmates after listening to you long enough to hear the beauty of your mind through your voice and understand that our eyes have met decades before they were opened, that our bones were made of stardust from the same star that floated over the oceans and that I am so grateful to be able to share, to breathe, the same air as you do in this lifetime. - Mishal Mazin |
He has gained a name for himself with regular performances at the monthly Colombo Poets coffee shop events and says “exposure helps with experience. There are lots of great and very interesting individuals I’ve come to work with at Colombo Poets. That coffee shop is the catalyst to all that I am today.”
Now that he has managed to successfully tackle even larger audiences (even receiving a standing ovation from some audience members for his graceful exit and re-entry), Mishal is looking forward to bigger and better things. “I’ll keep writing.
This art form and its community has been soaring since we set up Colombo Poets almost a year ago and it’s just going to keep getting better.”