Japanese Language Meetup and The Rumpus’s Original Poetry Features for Poetry Month!

Had a wonderful time at last night’s Japanese Language Meetup at the Lake Hills Library. My friend Kaori did a wonderful job talking about haiku in Japanese, I read a couple of poems from She Returns to the Floating World, and the folks who showed up for the meeting wrote beautiful haiku, haiku that would rival any of my grad students, and the atmosphere was so fun and lively. The night reminded me that the differences of haiku in Japanese are striking and listening to my own poetry translated into Japanese (which Kaori also read) reminded me of the magic that happens when you shift from one language into another. It also definitely reminded me I need to brush up on my conversational Japanese. I think I can say “hello” and “thank you” and can understand about every third word in a conversation about poetry (because I’ve studied those particular phrases) but seeing something on the page and hearing them out loud are two different things! Anyway, it was great fun and I felt honored to be there.

Also, very excited about the National Poetry Month original poetry feature at The Rumpus, especially the poem coming up on April 17. Check out the poems here:
http://therumpus.net/2012/04/national-poetry-month-2012-lineup/

Also, if you haven’t left a comment yet (with your e-mail addy in case you win) to win some books, go do so!