The EMU Mills International Center hosted its annual World Poetry Night Thursday night, drawing a large and diverse crowd of poets and other curious folk in need of artistic recourse. The call for submissions to the event — now in its ninth year — invited students, staff, faculty and community members to participate and “showcase their poetic voices of culture.”
Hosted by University Spanish instructor @@cq@@Amanda Powell,@@http://www.uoregon.edu./findpeople/person/Amanda*Powell@@ the evening began with the scheduled recital of 22 chosen works, followed by an open-mic session. The performances were mainly in Russian, Spanish, Arabic and English. Coordinators were looking for any kind of spoken word the reader could adequately orate, while naturally also hoping for some degree of dramatic flare.
“Everyone is welcome,” said Ryosuke Hongo,@@http://www.uoregon.edu./findpeople/person/Ryosuke*Hongo@@ University senior and one of four program managers at the Mills Center. “Some people think this is not an event for domestic students, but that’s entirely not the case. We try to reach out to everybody. By having this event, we hope people can be familiarized with other cultures and their languages.”
Hueda Kapri,@@http://www.uoregon.edu./findpeople/person/Hueda*Kapri@@ an undeclared University freshman from Albania, performed a monologue in Albanian dedicated to the victims of a tragic accident that occurred in 2004. A group of 16 people en route to Italy drowned in the Adriatic Sea when their ship capsized during a storm. Her performance was dedicated to the loss of life, which she believes was entirely preventable.
“They were trying to find a better life — to escape from poverty,” she said. “They made a distress call, but the government never helped them. They didn’t even look for the bodies.”
The night’s poetry — quite dark at points, but uplifting at others — consisted of both original works and pieces from cultures around the world that resonated with the readers. Though read in their original language, poems were supplemented by an English translation projected on a screen behind the speaker’s podium. A team of American Sign Language interpreters@@http://www.aslnetwork.com/@@ also rotated throughout the event.@@nice@@
“It was really interesting to see how the passion of poetry can be expressed,” University senior Michael Naylor said.@@http://www.uoregon.edu./findpeople/person/Michael*Naylor@@ “Not even knowing the words, you could still understand the emotion.”
Correction: The picture with this article ran in print Friday, Feb. 17 with the incorrect caption, “Nastasia Savenkova, an international student from Poland, reads a traditional Polish children’s poem, “The Ornament,” last night at the EMU Mills International Center for World Poetry Night.” The woman in the photograph has been identified as Hanna Samola and the poem she read was “The Old Water Rat.”