Other tongues
April 1, 2017
The end of March brought two interesting encounters with literature in other tongues - one in Spanish, one in Greek.On March 22, I was delighted to take part again in the Quixote Festival that Rafael Osuba has created across North Carolina. Last year, I read from Cervantes as well as from "Hotel Worthy" in Cameron Village Library, Raleigh. This year, it was a celebration of 50 years of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude." You can see an impromptu interview on the home page, and a bit of the readings (also from "Hotel Worthy") on my Facebook page as well.
It was great to be back on the campus of Queens University of Charlotte, where I gained my MFA, and to join a group of poets and writers to celebrate the work of the word in both English and Spanish. My Spanish, sadly, is limited - I could gather a few phrases or words, but it was like picking wildflowers out of dried hay, the color and scent were gone.
If my Spanish is limited, then my Greek is nonexistent - still, I will be excited to see translations of some of my poems done by students of Evangelia Liana Sakelliou at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. I had some correspondence with one of the students regarding "He Whom You Love," a pantoum about the fate of Lazarus. It features vernacular like "full of piss and vinegar" - wonder what the equivalent is in Greek?
Should they appear in Poeticanet, as Dr. Sakkeliou indicated, I'll post a link - it is a bilingual journal.