Boston Herald: Making It Big (Top)

I may be a globe-trotting international poet but one of the things I am most proud of is teaching mime and commedia dell'arte classes to the kids who come each summer to Open Air Circus in Somerville where I live. Jed Gottlieb writes in The Boston Herald:

...Ian Thal has spent seven years teaching students commedia dell’arte, an improvised masked slapstick that originated in Italy during the Renaissance.

“If I do my job well, the kids learn that creativity is a shared enterprise, that wit can be as much in the body as in words,” Thal said. “When they get to that age where they start studying Shakespeare in school, they recognize that the Bard’s roots are as much in broad, over-the-top comedy as in poetry.”

There's still time to register! Classes begin tonight!

Tingujt e erës/Sounds of Wind

I recently travelled to Prizren in the Republic of Kosova as a guest of the Writers Union of Kosova (Lidhja e Shkrimtarëve e Kosovës) at their Drini Poetik international poetry festival to celebrate the publication of
Tingujt e erës:Lirikë e re Amerikane or Sounds of Wind: New American Lyrics, a bilingual anthology of contemporary American poetry collected and translated into Albanian by Lediana Stillo an Albanian poet and playwright who lives in the United States, edited by Abdyl Kadolli, with cover art by Shpend Bengu, and layout by Tafil Duraku.

Featured poets include Craig Arnold, Dave Brinks, Megan Burns, Maggie Cleveland, Timothy Donnelly, Stuart Greenhouse, Anatoly Molotkov, Chad Parenteau, John Sibley Williams and myself.

I travelled to Prizren with Dave Brinks and Lediana Stillo, enjoyed the festival and spent the week learning about Kosova. I hope to be sharing with you stories of my adventures abroad in the near future.

My understanding is that the collection will be used as a textbook in teaching the translation of literary English into Albanian.

Leaving For Prizren

I am soon to depart for Kosovo to attend the Drini Poetik International Festival of Poetry in Prizren, Kosovo on June 9th & 10th as a guest of the Lidhja e Shrimtarëve e Kosovës (Writers Union* of Kosova.)

The occasion of my attendance will be the publication of Tingujt e ëres: Lirikë e re amerikane (Sound of Winds: New American Lyrics) an anthology of American poetry collected and translated into Albanian by Lediana Stillo and published by the LShK. Several of my poems were included as were poems by New Orleans poet, Dave Brinks, who will also be attending.

France will be represented by Yvan Tetelbom.

I'm very excited.

* Depending on the circumstances, the Albanian word "lidhja" is translated into English as "League," "Association," or "Union." The program names the LShK as a "Union" though some of my earlier correspondence used the term "League" in English.