At a recent evening dedicated to poetry from around the world, students recited poems in Arabic, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Italian, Russian, French, Korean, and Japanese. English translations were provided.
The poems were heartfelt, lyrical, and full of drama, and appreciated both by native and nonnative speakers. During interludes, Amos Libby, codirector of the Middle Eastern Ensemble, played the Turkish oud and sang Palestinian and Egyptian songs. Batool Khattab, lecturer in Arabic, organized the multilingual poetry evening in collaboration with faculty from the Russian department. Guests were treated to Russian and Middle Eastern sweets.
The program:
"Think of Others," by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish
"Of the Names That I Love," from Andulusian Love Poetry
An excerpt from Les Contemplations, by French poet Victor Hugo
"Prologue," by Korean poet Yun Dong-Ju
"The Island of Language," by Brianna Cunliffe ’22
"Cholera," by Iraqi poet Nazik Al-Malaika
An excerpt from Illiad Book 24
Inferno, Canto 1, by Dante Alighieri
"To Giorgio Vasari," by Michelangelo Buonarroti
"Strong in the Rain," by Kenji Miyazawa
"Night, Street, Apothecary," by Alexander Blok
"In the Evening," by Anna Akhmatova
An excerpt from "Autumn," by Alexander Pushkin
"The End of a Beautiful Era," by Joseph Brodsky
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September 21, 2023Bowdoin will be staging its first bilingual main season production next year, a reimaginingof the seventeenth-century Spanish comedia classic, Valor, Outrage, and Woman, by Ana Caro de Mallén. Auditions are coming up, and you don’t have to be bilingual to take part. -
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