PROJECTS
NEWS: H.A.L. Shanghai Poetry Slam going down in September 2010:
H.A.L is looking for performance-based poets to compete in a poetry slam. If you think you got the chops to get up and stage and rock the mic like a vandal contact Butler at greatwhitebuddha@gmail.com
Please send 5 short battle ready poems to the point, to the point no faking, with a brief bio including your name and contact info following the selected poems. Each poem should be a 150 words or les. If you got the mad skills an interview will be arranged to showcase a few pieces for us and if you are indeed a manically nefarious master of the spoken word you will be chosen to compete against other wordsmiths in a no holds barred battle of the bards!
H.A.L. Projects
Poetry, prose, screen plays, essays, epiphanies, or pornography – as long as it is quality. Projects currently in development include movie scripts and our anticipated 56th minority report essay collection. 2010 will also see the publishing of our first full-length novel, alongside a smaller edition of postpat Chinglish and Engnese poetry.
H.A.L.’s first edition party like it’s 1984 – short stories from the peoples’ republic of will debut in Summer 2010, and comprises British, Swedish, American, Nigerian, Canadian and Chinese writers. The topics and themes entertained by the book’s contents are equally diverse. Previews below.
party like it’s 1984: short stories from the peoples’ republic of
Hunter Braithwaite – Rope
…After school I told him I was moving to China. Every generation wants something better for their children, he said with a satisfied look, something that they themselves could have done had they been smarter or richer or the world somehow different. And while he certainly didn’t want to go to China, which was a nice place except for all the Chinese people, he thought it just fine that I’d scrape out a life over there for the time being. He paused and adjusted the seat of his pants before continuing. “But don’t think for a moment that we’re not tied down to somebody somewhere, because we are. And while the ropes have gotten longer, that only provides for more snap when they get tight…
Mark William Butler – I am Barbie
…Full of happy I am reading a magazine I get from reading room. I turn to page 42 and there she is. Barbie. It is big picture of just her eye, underneath is her name in the rich pink writing. Her eye shines as if ocean lives there and her lashes are long and black. I get excited and show to Ken, she frowns and hangs her head sideways to get better look. Ken squishes lips together and then nods. Ken say that is her work, she can tell. She made this Barbie. She recognize her work anyplace. I am thinking this is omen…
Jacob Dreyer – 红口梦
…Shanghai’s working class gay men have gathered here for the last 20 years, ages 20-60. I’ve never seen such an inclusive place, it makes me think of what the first days of house music must have been like. The absolute search for human freedom is located amidst leering taxi drivers, divans that are in fact the recuperated seats from crashed cars, an assortment of card tables with boiled water in thermoses, green tea leaves and plastic cups. Though beer is cheap here, nearly as cheap as in a convenience store. Still, I’m the only one drinking…
Sebastian Caspar – Damnatio memorie
…On my way to the research station I notice red flowers springing up by the side of the road, and at the entrance to The Hengshan Lu metro I observe a sickly sweet stench blowing through the tunnels. There could be various reasons for this. There have been whisperings about a massacre, out there, in the outer suburbs, where the autonomous regions take over. Paramilitary death squads had done their deeds – so they say – and thrown the bodies in mass graves right by the subway ventilation towers. I’m most grateful for my one room apartment, which even contains a shower. The poor European refugees living in the parks surely never clean themselves, not even in summer. A bad business…