Poetry Reading at Metelkova

 Thanks to various contacts in the poetry world, set up before departure (thanks to Gary Lawless of Gulf of Maine Bookstore, in Brunswick, and Ray Miller), I was invited to participate in a monthly poetry reading in Metelkova, an autonomous communal cultural space here in Ljubljana. (See link below for more background on this area).

This poetry space, now in its tenth year, welcomes voices of all kinds, from beginning to established poets, and each guest is given equal time: about ten minutes.  With seven poets reading, this makes for a lovely mix of voices.

With my modest Slovenian, I had the cool experience of just listening to the sounds of the language, the voices of the poets, their cadences, pitch, emotion, and body language.  A bit like listening to Indie music, and I was completely taken into the words.

Veronika Dintinyana, who organizes the readings with poet Dejan Koban, translated some of my poems, so when it was my turn to read, she followed my English with a Slovenian translation. This made for some dynamic verbal music, and I'll look forward to working more with Veronika in the future.

One humorous piece of the night:  Metelkova, like much of Ljubljana, is dog friendly, so of course I brought Bella with me.  She spent most of the evening visiting all the  guests' tables or chairs, getting lots of attention, and a taste of beer (not to her liking).  But what she really wanted was to sit in the poet's chair on stage:  a red overstuffed armchair, with a microphone near to project the seated poet's voice.  Bella tried to nose next to a few reading poets, but her triumph came after the last poet read, the chair was empty, and she claimed it.  A memorable moment for all watching.

 Take a look at this link for a history of the fascinating space known as 
Metelkova