Ex Voto

I'm not sure what I was expecting at the Ex Voto reading, but the Joynes Reading Room had been transformed. It's usually very bright and airy, probably due to the windows, but when it's dark outside it feels very cloistered. Combining that feeling with the relatively dim lighting (unless my memory is failing me), stepping into the room before the reading began felt like stepping into a quiet hole in time where the outside world didn't exist. It was extremely surreal, although this aura was broken every time somebody entered from outside or the Joynes assistants walked to the seminar room with refreshments.

Again, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but Adélia Prado was very distinguished. In comparison, Ellen Watson seemed vibrant and energetic, eager to help her friend. The dynamic between them seemed similar to a pair of friends or siblings in which one is clearly acknowledged to be more proficient or established in a field; Watson's continued descriptions of how she felt while translating Prado's work and showing Prado her own works translated into Portuguese only reinforced that idea. Seeing them interact and laugh (and seeing the crowd of Portuguese-speakers in the front few rows react with them) was heartening in that slightly confused sense where you don't exactly know why you're laughing, but you are.

Hearing her introduction and some of her back-story made all of her experiences more clear; in particular, I remember Watson describing Prado's poem about the ocean and how Prado struggled to describe it to her family, full of people who have never seen it before. With her family being of that time and location and yet now with Prado herself being a published poet in multiple languages...experiencing that firsthand truly helped me appreciate how much of an opportunity it was to see her. Listening to life experiences is one of my favorite experiences, and hearing about them through her poetry was stunning.

Her poetry itself was beautiful, but listening to her deliver it in the original Portuguese was the best part of the evening. Much like how the world becomes more beautiful and easier to bear when I take my glasses off and let everything blur together, letting the foreign syllables wash over me was soothing. Most of what I hear everyday around campus, in classes, even in the foreign music I listen to is understandable to me, at least in bits and pieces. Hearing a language that I finally didn't know at all was surprisingly refreshing, although I couldn't help but try to pick out cognates here and there (with my only success being the word 'sex'!). Relying on just the poet's delivery to feel the emotion involved was a new experience (almost like being blindfolded and having your other senses heighten to compensate), but it was certainly worth it. I wasn't able to get a copy of her works from Joynes, but it's on my list of works to read.