Gloucester Writers Center — Jana Orlová, September 23

Back to Cape Ann for a few days for the sea, salt air — & the GWC. The evening’s writer was Czech poet & performance artist Jana Orlová, introduced by Bob Whalen. I had met Bob this past April when I came over for the one-day Rockport Poetry Festival, which included a Zoom event with poets from all over the world. I don’t know if Orlová was in the mix that day, but it is easy to see how he would know about her. 

Tonight she read poems from her three books of poems inspired by Czech underground writers & by Haiku, the poems short, some read in both English & Czech, erotic themes, overt & sometimes just oblique undertones. Some satire based on a Communist TV program. It was fascinating work that I was able to later explore online.

Her reading inspired a discussion among the audience & Orlová about the nature of translation, the ongoing debate about “exact” translation versus re-creating the original poem as a good poem in the other language, perhaps the act of translation spawning new work in a different language. It was a good audience for that discussion — literate, some with multiple languages. It was one of those un-expected joys of just attending without knowing anything about the presenting writer beforehand. 

Jana Orlová is on Facebook & her work can be found on YouTube &, of course, on her website.