O

ne of the goals of a writers and readers festival is to showcase a range of opinions, without bias.

Saturday night's Poetry Slam, a free event during the annual Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, let those values ring; certainly in somewhat flat notes at times, but at others at gut wrenching pitch.

A poetry slam insists on audience resonance, rather than prescribed literary form, as the measure of literary worth of the brave souls running the "golden microphone" gauntlet. Performances are judged by randomly selected audience members, as well as by either nosy hand-clapping or loud boos from the crowd.

Saturday night's gig, emceed by the brilliant Australian 2008 Poetry Slam poet champion and hip hop artist, Omar Musa, whose words are up there with W.H. Auden's post WW1 pieces in their harshness of blood tenderness, led poets great and small to speak out their souls.

Where many of the presentations ran the gamut of the search for immortality through a reunion with Buddha, Love, Lust or other less ordinary forms of spiritual redemption, there were grounded pieces, such as that by 10 year-old Indi, which delightfully discussed the value of funny bones; if you can bear that bump you can bear far tougher ones throughout life.

There were also very bravely, and superbly constructed words by Stefanie from Jakarta, who discussed in her work the position of Chinese-born Indonesians.

Within her allotted Poetry Slam two minutes she carried listeners through the 400 years of oppression Chinese as "Asia's Jews", have suffered. Her work culminated in the chilling description of a loved one's rape during the 1998 sweeping of Chinese-Indonesians.

In fine Poetry Slam form, South African born Troy penned his piece during the performances of earlier orators.

Bent over in the half light, Troy read out the poem scribbled on his knees, earning eights and nines from the judges for his efforts.