World Poetry Her Story by Ariadne Sawyer
By worldpoetry on March 28, 2008 - 7:36pm
World Poetry Her Story
We began The World Poetry Café Reading Series; nine years ago at Miles of Beans Coffee shop in Burnaby, BC.
People often ask me “You do all this work for World Poetry-For Free?” in a voice that implied perhaps I have lost my mind.
Recently I have looked for the answers to this question. The two answers that I come up with are justice and vision.
1) Before we began the series, Alejandro had tried to find a venue to read in Vancouver where he would be allowed to read in Spanish and English. Everywhere he went, he had the door closed. One group, who charged per poem to read, would not even allow him to pay double so that the poem could be in two languages. Some venue hosts were really rude to him. They told him to go home and learn English. It is very hard for a survivor of torture to learn English since he experienced the loud background music of America Rock n Roll while he was tortured in Chile.
