On Monday night, Raven Mack brought his Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts to RVA's Studio Two Three for a Hand-To-Hand Haiku Tournament, the first of its kind to take place in Richmond. We've told you about Raven Mack before; this former Richmond resident, now based on a rural compound outside Charlottesville, mixes writing and art in all sorts of creative ways--most notably, carving haiku into railroad spikes. But he got his start making zines, and the world of zines is still his homebase. His biggest current project is the One Thousand Feathers zine project, and the Hand-To-Hand Haiku Tournament he hosted on Monday, September 23 was a benefit for the Richmond Zine Fest.
Raven explains the rules
But what exactly is a Hand-To-Hand Haiku Tournament? Plenty of people showed up to Studio Two Three's back room on Monday night to find out--the room was filled with spectators and competitors. There were half a dozen rows of folding chairs set up in the room, and by the time the event kicked off, not only were all of the chairs occupied, quite a few people were standing around the edges of the room, or seated against the walls alongside the small stage. Raven Mack took the stage just after 8 PM to introduce the event and explain the rules. He loosened the crowd up by telling us of his personal history making zines in Richmond back in the 90s, and about the Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts programs he ran with local teenage boys in the homeschooling community around Charlottesville. Those programs involved getting kids to write haiku, and the haiku tournaments were a natural outgrowth of that program. Starting out at Charlottesville's Bon Coffee, where Raven has been holding haiku tournaments every third Thursday for the past few months, he explained that the tournaments had been bringing together people from different communities and cultural backgrounds into a centralized exchange of ideas.
Round 1 of the tournament
A similar phenomenon seemed to be taking place in Richmond, if the crowd at Studio Two Three was any indication. From crusty punks to cleancut college kids and well-dressed thirtysomethings, there was a wide variety of people on hand, and 11 attendees signed up to compete in the tournament. Raven had recruited three judges beforehand, all of whom were stationed at random spots in the crowd. Of the two competitors onstage at any given time, one would be represented by a blue flag, one by a red flag. After each competitor read their haiku, the three judges would hold up the flag representing the one they liked better. In the early rounds, contestants had to win best two out of three, while later rounds moved to best three out of five and the final round between the last two poets standing was a best of seven round. Raven split up the rounds by telling us more stories about his current writing projects, what led him to focus on haiku as a poetic form (an explanation very similar to the one he gave us in our interview last year), and how he started to carve haiku in railroad spikes. He had one of the spikes with him that night, which was awarded at the end of the night to the winner of the competition.
The competition itself was a lot of fun. More cerebral, less immediately absorbed ideas soon fell by the wayside, as contestants realized that they'd get the best reactions from the judges and the crowd through topics with some shock and/or humor value. People read haiku about outdoor sex, hating their jobs, drug use, radical politics, and all sorts of other topics. While the nature of the single-elimination competition meant that some competitors only ever read two or three poems, everyone who took the stage showed talent and sincerity. Raven advised before the competition that people should focus on their own worldview and be honest about where they were coming from; contestants seemed to follow this advice, and it made for some great haiku, from both winners and losers. I've never been the sort of person to get excited about poetry readings, but I was soon caught up in the spirit of the evening.
With less than a dozen total contestants, the eliminations moved fairly quickly, and the entire tournament lasted little more than an hour. However, the evening's program of events didn't seem skimpy at all, and everyone in the house seemed to have a good time. The tournament was won by Paul Robertson, who received the haiku railroad spike, while runner-up Mo Karnage was awarded a copy of Raven's book, Beerbox Haiku. Afterwards, Raven offered up a table full of his zines for the taking, asking only that people make donations to benefit the Richmond Zine Fest in exchange. He announced the date for the next Richmond area Hand-To-Hand Haiku Tournament, which will take place at Balliceaux on Tuesday, October 22. That evening's theme will be "Personal Demons." Even if you're not the sort of person who gravitates towards poetry events, you're sure to be entertained by what goes down.
Keep up with Raven Mack and his Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts at rojonekku.com, ravenmcmillian.com, or on twitter @SSVa_Raven. Buy his books in digital form at Smashwords and in physical form from Amazon. And pick up original mounted photos and haiku railroad spikes from the Workingman Books Etsy page.
The Richmond Zine Fest will take place this year on Saturday, October 5 at the Gay Community Center of Richmond. Get the details at http://richmondzinefest.org/ or follow the Richmond Zine Fest on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/rvazinefest.