10-year old girl wins hearts and 3rd place in Dubai Poetry Slam

10-year old girl wins hearts and 3rd place in Dubai Poetry Slam

Na’eema performs before the audience in Dubai. Left photo by Abdullah Ali; right photo by David Kominek

By Analise Ticzon

Na’eema Ticzon Garcia, a 10-year old Filipino-Canadian student, won third place in the Dubai Poetry Slam titled “Intersecting Pens,” held Sunday, Feb. 21, at Intersect by Lexus, Gate Village, Dubai.

The event featured the performance of 15 spoken word artists and poets of different cultural and professional backgrounds, and Garcia was the only child contender.

Her piece, entitled, “Because I am a Girl,” was an original composition, inspired from Plan Canada’s ‘Because I am a Girl’ initiative and her attendance to the very first United Nations declared “International Day of The Girl” in 2012 at Dundas Square, Toronto. The aim of the global initiative aims to increase awareness of gender inequality and the rights of girls around the world regarding education, nutrition, health, marriage, violence and discrimination. It is a subject that has been nurtured through both parents since she was a baby attending International Women’s Day events in her stroller and exposure to documentaries on the plight that would mold her into an active and positive contributing member to the society and world she would be growing up in. She expresses about the purpose of this poem, “I realized that people, even myself sometimes, can make decisions or choices subconsciously because of this gender stereotyping. I wanted people to understand this from a little girl’s perspective because, for example, even though I like pink sometimes, it doesn’t mean that I should be forced to only like that colour. Or that people assume that because I am a girl, I would prefer the pink dress over the blue. We should be able to choose what we like from the beginning.”

She first performed this moving and inspirational spoken-word piece in Toronto at an Open Mic event held by “Speak Out Poetry” when she was only 7.  However, now more than 3 years later, with a wider vocabulary and more mature insight to the cause, Garcia re-wrote, edited and sharpened it up for her slot at the Dubai event.

Traditionally, judges are randomly selected from the audience using a 10-point system and holding up their results to be tallied after each poet’s performance. Since Poetry Slams were birthed from an urban scene, there is no formal scoring system on the delivery, content, and composition but rather upon the totality of those aspects and the message that actually moves the crowd in the end.

Dubai Poetry Slam “is all about giving local talent the opportunity to showcase their spoken word poetry,” is how the monthly event is described on its website.  Encouraged by UAE’s growing spoken word and poetry scene, the event is attracting mostly expatriates from various cultures and professions. For this family of writers, stumbling upon this event post on social media, prompted the excitement and anticipation that they would be able to continue and explore the free-art form of spoken word in another part of the world.

Garcia is not new to the Poetry Slam scene.  In her early years in Toronto, where she was born, she would tag along with her parents to spoken word events and watch her father and mother perform. When she was four years old, she spontaneously performed Somali-Canadian, K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag” as a finale to end an Open Mic event at Kapisanan Community Centre.

Aside from her passion for poetry, the precocious10-year old also excels in academics, Arabic and French languages. Currently, she is a co-host on her school radio station, an active member of her school basketball team and the Pure Playaz Sports Basketball Camp & Clinic organization in Dubai. Formerly trained by Yuanling Yuan, the youngest Canadian awarded the title of WIM (Women International Master), Garcia started her own chess career as CMA-rated (Chess ‘n Math Association, Canada’s National Scholastic Chess Organization) player and has more recently decided to aim higher by becoming a registered FIDE-rated chess player that enables her to compete internationally. Na’eema is definitely part of the movement to challenge the conventional blue/pink-print of little girls, their goals and dreams for their future! She added, “It really wasn’t about winning a place in the Slam, I just wanted to use the opportunity to get up there and make people think about the message. That’s more important to me.”

The young poet is the daughter of Lawrence Garcia and Analise Ticzon of Toronto.