K&Q Bardic Entries, 2014
This is mostly for my records:
Kings and Queen’s Bardic 2014
Round 1: Period offering, no longer than 5 minutes.
My intro spoke of war and aked the people of the East Kingdom what they were going to offer their Country to support the war. Then I introduced the two poems from the Purananuru: Poems 86 and 312 by the Poets Kāvarpendu and Ponmudiyār respectively, and explained to the audience that they had the same theme: A mother’s offering to the war.
You lean against the central pillar
of my house and ask,
“Where is your son?”
I do not know.
Once this womb was
a mountain cave
for that tiger.
Now you will only find him
stalking the battlefields.
[PAUSE]
To bring forth and raise a son is my duty
To make him noble is his father’s.
To forge spears for him is the blacksmith’s.
To show him right action is the king’s.
And to bear
a bright sword and do battle,
to butcher enemy elephants,
and to come home…
That is a young man’s duty.
Round 2 for SCA relevance: No more than 8 minutes
My into went: The great Tamil poet Avvaiyar wrote children’s teaching poetry to summarize and make memorable important laws of her culture. These poems are in a short 4 line verse form called a Venpa. As I look around our Great Society, I see many laws that are difficult to remember and hard to teach. So I have taken it upon myself to take a selecton of the most important of these Laws and place them in, what I can assure you, is strict Venpa format. (Hand documentation to judge).
[In short my documentation was the references I gathered after about 2 weeks of heads down scouring through texts to try to figure out how a successful Venpa might be written in English. The rules in Tamil are fairly well documented, but they rely on the sounds and patterns that the language of Tamil makes when spoken. IE The verse form does not translate easily in English. But we have managed to get an approximation of both Haiku and Tanka verse forms into English, so I figured there was room for another highly structured syllable based versification. I just needed to figure out how to make it work. I settled on:
A 4 line poem.
4 words on the first 3 lines.
· The first 3 words of each line can only be no longer than 5 syllables and can't be 1 syllable.
· The last word on the first 3 lines must be only 1 syllable.
3 words on the last line.
· The first 2 words of this line can only be no longer than 5 syllables and can't be 1 syllable.
· The last word on the last line can only be 2 or 3 syllables long.
If I end a word with a short syllable, I should start the next word with a long one, and vice versa. This is to maintain a roughly iambic tone.
Additionally in Tamil: Words can often be squished together to form a single word. Example: In English we call it a Stop Sign. In Tamil it might be a “SignStop”. This is similar to German, where Stop Sign translates to “stoppschild”. I have allowed myself some license to, in some cases, hyphenate two words together into one, but I try not to do it more than once a poem.]
Silverwing's law # 13
“In the East, if the King says to dig a ditch, Curia must discuss and approve it. In the West, if the King says to dig a ditch, it takes 4 months to find a shovel. “- Alexander Listkeeper
Ditch-digging ordered; royal rule.
Curia, nattering, sanctions it.
Western ditch-digging? Multiple months
expended finding shovels.
Silverwing’s Law #23
Anything a King gives Twice is an Order. (If the king gives me a dead halibut, he has given me a dead halibut. If, next week, he gives you one, we are now Companions of the Halibut and I'm the principal) -Master Steffan
Twofold Honor, Halibut Gift,
Creates Order Innermost Court:
Vishnu’s Holy Colleagues. Me
Established Principle Colleague.
Silverwing’s Law #43.
The most important thing is a cool mug or goblet. Without a mug or goblet, you end up with a paper cup or a modern bottle or an aluminum can in your hand and you are a SLOB. Add a cool mug or goblet and immediately you, too, are cool. -Duke Finvarr de Taahe
Goblet holding equals cool.
Aluminum container equals SLOB!
Displaying hand-thrown period mug?
Immediately conveys coolness.
Silverwing’s Law #107
Make sure the damsel WANTS to be rescued (before charging in and making a fool of yourself). -Elspeth Keyfe of Neddingham
Eastern Damsels display strength.
Before a-charging blindly in
Assess fair-maiden’s current mind,
Foolish “hero” otherwise.
This seemed to go well. Many people thought it was clever. I was pleased that the Venpa seemed to work ok in English. The Queen stopped me on the way out and told me she thought it sounded rather norse. I gave her the summed up version of how it worked. I was asked back to participate in round 3. There were 6 finalists.
Round 3: For my final round I was asked to give an extemporaneous, inspirational speech on the virtue of Temperance. In the way of these things, I actually am not 100% sure of what I said. I opened my mouth and spoke. First I was funny, and then I made a point, then I softened my point with more funny, and then I picked up the serious point again and brought the virtue of Temperance into relevance in the SCA and got the whole room stomping their feet in time together, as if they were warriors marching in formation into the battle field, and then I got them to stop that marching, almost on a dime, and I concluded my speech into a room that had gone dead silent.
I knew immediately that I had nailed it.
It was filmed. I am told there is footage out there somewhere.
On the whole, I am very, very pleased with my performances.
I am disappointed that I will not be serving as a Royal Bard, but I think the two winners will do an excellent job, and I know they will be a pleasure to watch.
Kings and Queen’s Bardic 2014
Round 1: Period offering, no longer than 5 minutes.
My intro spoke of war and aked the people of the East Kingdom what they were going to offer their Country to support the war. Then I introduced the two poems from the Purananuru: Poems 86 and 312 by the Poets Kāvarpendu and Ponmudiyār respectively, and explained to the audience that they had the same theme: A mother’s offering to the war.
You lean against the central pillar
of my house and ask,
“Where is your son?”
I do not know.
Once this womb was
a mountain cave
for that tiger.
Now you will only find him
stalking the battlefields.
[PAUSE]
To bring forth and raise a son is my duty
To make him noble is his father’s.
To forge spears for him is the blacksmith’s.
To show him right action is the king’s.
And to bear
a bright sword and do battle,
to butcher enemy elephants,
and to come home…
That is a young man’s duty.
Round 2 for SCA relevance: No more than 8 minutes
My into went: The great Tamil poet Avvaiyar wrote children’s teaching poetry to summarize and make memorable important laws of her culture. These poems are in a short 4 line verse form called a Venpa. As I look around our Great Society, I see many laws that are difficult to remember and hard to teach. So I have taken it upon myself to take a selecton of the most important of these Laws and place them in, what I can assure you, is strict Venpa format. (Hand documentation to judge).
[In short my documentation was the references I gathered after about 2 weeks of heads down scouring through texts to try to figure out how a successful Venpa might be written in English. The rules in Tamil are fairly well documented, but they rely on the sounds and patterns that the language of Tamil makes when spoken. IE The verse form does not translate easily in English. But we have managed to get an approximation of both Haiku and Tanka verse forms into English, so I figured there was room for another highly structured syllable based versification. I just needed to figure out how to make it work. I settled on:
A 4 line poem.
4 words on the first 3 lines.
· The first 3 words of each line can only be no longer than 5 syllables and can't be 1 syllable.
· The last word on the first 3 lines must be only 1 syllable.
3 words on the last line.
· The first 2 words of this line can only be no longer than 5 syllables and can't be 1 syllable.
· The last word on the last line can only be 2 or 3 syllables long.
If I end a word with a short syllable, I should start the next word with a long one, and vice versa. This is to maintain a roughly iambic tone.
Additionally in Tamil: Words can often be squished together to form a single word. Example: In English we call it a Stop Sign. In Tamil it might be a “SignStop”. This is similar to German, where Stop Sign translates to “stoppschild”. I have allowed myself some license to, in some cases, hyphenate two words together into one, but I try not to do it more than once a poem.]
Silverwing's law # 13
“In the East, if the King says to dig a ditch, Curia must discuss and approve it. In the West, if the King says to dig a ditch, it takes 4 months to find a shovel. “- Alexander Listkeeper
Ditch-digging ordered; royal rule.
Curia, nattering, sanctions it.
Western ditch-digging? Multiple months
expended finding shovels.
Silverwing’s Law #23
Anything a King gives Twice is an Order. (If the king gives me a dead halibut, he has given me a dead halibut. If, next week, he gives you one, we are now Companions of the Halibut and I'm the principal) -Master Steffan
Twofold Honor, Halibut Gift,
Creates Order Innermost Court:
Vishnu’s Holy Colleagues. Me
Established Principle Colleague.
Silverwing’s Law #43.
The most important thing is a cool mug or goblet. Without a mug or goblet, you end up with a paper cup or a modern bottle or an aluminum can in your hand and you are a SLOB. Add a cool mug or goblet and immediately you, too, are cool. -Duke Finvarr de Taahe
Goblet holding equals cool.
Aluminum container equals SLOB!
Displaying hand-thrown period mug?
Immediately conveys coolness.
Silverwing’s Law #107
Make sure the damsel WANTS to be rescued (before charging in and making a fool of yourself). -Elspeth Keyfe of Neddingham
Eastern Damsels display strength.
Before a-charging blindly in
Assess fair-maiden’s current mind,
Foolish “hero” otherwise.
This seemed to go well. Many people thought it was clever. I was pleased that the Venpa seemed to work ok in English. The Queen stopped me on the way out and told me she thought it sounded rather norse. I gave her the summed up version of how it worked. I was asked back to participate in round 3. There were 6 finalists.
Round 3: For my final round I was asked to give an extemporaneous, inspirational speech on the virtue of Temperance. In the way of these things, I actually am not 100% sure of what I said. I opened my mouth and spoke. First I was funny, and then I made a point, then I softened my point with more funny, and then I picked up the serious point again and brought the virtue of Temperance into relevance in the SCA and got the whole room stomping their feet in time together, as if they were warriors marching in formation into the battle field, and then I got them to stop that marching, almost on a dime, and I concluded my speech into a room that had gone dead silent.
I knew immediately that I had nailed it.
It was filmed. I am told there is footage out there somewhere.
On the whole, I am very, very pleased with my performances.
I am disappointed that I will not be serving as a Royal Bard, but I think the two winners will do an excellent job, and I know they will be a pleasure to watch.