Week 102 — Poetry corner

Monday night Clare and I went to a multi-lingual poetry night at Smith's in Civic. Every Monday there is a poetry thing on, but this one was an open mic, and was centred on poems in people's native language. Most people would read a poem they like or wrote in a language other than English and then follow up with the English translation. Translating anything is a massive pain in the butt, but I'd imagine poetry would be an extra level of difficulty. Especially where there is a specific rhyming structure, and where things may be onomatopoeic and you need to find words that mean the same things and still fit within the same structure. But it was really interesting listening to poems in some languages that I was loosely familiar with, and, because of the slower delivery of poetry over conversation, being able to pick up a few words here and there. There was a lady who had learned Greek as a native English speaker and presented a poem she wrote in Greek, and then translated it to English,…