International Poetry Night : Presentation

On Thursday the Department of Language, Literature, and Philosophy presented the 6^th annual International Poetry Night here on the SOU campus at 7pm and ran for about an hour and a half. It was held in the Meese Auditorium of the Art building. The theme of the event was Liberty and Justice. The theme was present through each of the poems that were chosen, though not all reflected the concepts of liberty or justice, but rather a pursuit of it, or a want of it, or a lack of it. We were given programs that had all of the poems written out, in both languages, and all the names of readers and poems that follow will be coming from there.

The evening was run with a simple structure. Each poem was read aloud in both its native language and in English. There were nine languages, other than English, represented: Japanese, French, Polish, Finnish, German, Somali, Vietnamese, Korean and Spanish. Some of the languages had more than one poem read: Japanese, French, German and Spanish each had two. Each language was presented by a member of the SOU staff, including brief histories of the authors, and then read by students from the schools.

The audience was asked by Scott Rex to hold their applause until both versions of the poem was read, but we failed in the one simple task given to us. It wasn’t the worst rule to break, of course, because we ended up applauding each poem individually, and that was an honor they at least deserved. Plus, it’s just difficult not to clap when someone finishes reading something, in English or not. I think some of the audience tried it, I know I did, just sitting quiet after the first reader. I almost had to sit on my hands, feeling rude and unappreciative. So I, I admit, consciously broke that direction. Sorry, Scott!

The Chair of the Foreign Languages, Daniel Morris, department opened the night with a brief overview of the evening, and a description of the unifying theme for the evening. He quickly gave the podium and its microphone over to the evenings presenters, however.

The first language of the evening, Japanese, was presented by Yuko Yamanouchi, Japanese professor here. The two poems were “Thousands of Enemies May Come” by Bimyosai Yamada and “Freedom in the Mountains” by Doppo Kunikida. Both were read by Noriko Yukataki in Japanese, and in English by Kyle A.K. Peets and Ana Lo’Presti respectively. Japanese is interesting to me, because I used to spend a lot of time watching Japanese cartoons or playing Japanese language video games, despite the fact that I’ve no knowledge of the language itself. So listening to the poems seems oddly familiar.

French is another language I’ve heard quite a lot. I took one term of it while studying here at SOU, before I realized that I could never learn another language. I could recognize some of the words, then, when reading and listening to them. Originally Marianne Golding, French professor, was going to introduce this section, but she was replaced (due to illness, I believe, though she was in the audience for the evening), by Daniel Morris. The poems were “Since Honest Men Are in the Slime” by Victor Hugo and “Liberty” by Paul Eluard.

My friends and I have a running joke about writers. Old time writers, anyway. It always seems that if you were a writer ‘back in the day’ you had to get tuberculosis. Like TB was some kind of rite of passage, if you managed to survive it. Paul Eluard must have been some grand level writer, because he got, and survived, TB twice in his lifetime.

Kevin Rapet read the French version of Hugo’s work, Betty Walker the English. Travis Walker and Jenna Ryan, in the same order, read the two translations of “Liberty”. Polish was next, with one poem and author presented by Scott Rex. Since he didn’t remind us to hold our applause I could only assume he had forgiven us for that transgression. The poem was “Starvation Camp Near Jaslo” by Wislawa Szymborska, read by Piotr Rudzinsky in Polish and Jess Rowan in English. It is exactly as cheery as it sounds, but very powerful in its message. There certainly wasn’t any liberty or justice during the holocaust for the Polish people, after all.

Next up was a Finnish poem by Johan Ludvig Runeberg. It was presented by Scott Rex, and read by Jukka Boyd in its native language and Nick Rementeria in English. I learned something interesting from the presentation. Apparently there are only six million people in the world that speak Finnish, and we had one in our midst. To put that in perspective for us, Scott said there were more people who spoke Spanish in California than Finnish in the world.

The German language had two poems to present, “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan, and “In Front of my House” by Sarah Kirsch. Nico Schubert and Liz Morgan-Beesley handled the German readings, and Bradon Schilling and Zoe Wright did the English.

Scott Rex then presented Somali, and after that he presented Vietnamese and Korean. The Somali poem was called “Somali Tree Poem” in the program, written by Shukria Dini in support of environmental preservation. It was read by Abdiaziz Guled and Sam Fuller. “The Flute of River O” by Huy Thong was read by Lunh Nguyen and Josh Weigang for the Vietnamese presentation. From Korea came “The Silence of Love” by Han Yong-un and read by ByungJoon Jun in Korean and Nick Rementeria in English.

Spanish was the last language of the evening, closing the event with two poems, presented by Anne Conner, our Spanish professor. The first was “Needless to Say” by Maria Mercedes Carranza, read by Spencer Ewing and Ana Lo’Presti. Apparently it was Spencer’s birthday that evening, so hopefully he had fun. The second was “What We Await” by Oliverio Girondo, read by Amanda Martinez and Travis Chaney. Travis was also responsible for translating both Spanish poems for the evening.

We clapped and were left with a few parting words, commending the efforts of everyone involved. The fair sized crowd moved out, buzzing about the readings. It had been a success, by all appearances and, hopefully, opinions.