Poets Cornered: Bohdan Piasecki, The Poetry Project

Roses are red, violets are blue and The Poetry Project is The Bookworm’s fortnight-long foray into the valley of verse. Those are the facts. Here’s another: Three accomplished performance poets – Luka Lesson, Omar Musa and Bohdan Piasecki – will take on the challenge of rhyming in front of crowds and hosting school workshops. Before that, we gave them a challenge of our own. We asked them to write us a poem based on a Beijing photograph. Here’s what Bohdan Piasecki created …

“Oversight” by Bohdan Piasecki

In retrospect of course it seems painfully obvious,
but on this busy side street we would buy, and sell,
and a colourless cat seemed of no consequence.

That’s why at first none of us saw it grow, the gray.
The cat brought monochrome with every visit.
Us, we’d ignore desaturated iceboxes,

sachets of old hair product turning gray.
Cardboard is often gray, bricks can be gray.

There was a feature in the paper on a slow news day.
“Yes, we all watch the line crawling over our skin.”

Luka, Omar and Bohdan will be performing at various events including The Bookworm + JUE Showcase at 2 Kolegas on Oct 20. Bohdan will be performing on this own at The Bookworm on Oct 23.

Photos: Vicky Mohiedeen and courtesy of the poets