Poetry karaoke: what the world sounds like?

Never before in the annals of human experience have the words ‘karaoke’ and ‘Katy Evans-Bush’ been joined.

However it now transpires that in three hours as I write I will be presenting a Poetry Karaoke in the Clore Ballroom, which is the sunken bit in the Royal Festival Hall bar, in London, for those of you wondering what on earth to do at noon today.

The format is this: four poets, each from a different country. Each has prepared some poems in their own language – either translated into it or written in it. They read them in their own language. The audience, having been told the poet, has to guess the poem. We have someone read the English translation too – but there are no projections, and as of right now I don’t know what one of the poets is going to read – and haven’t seen the other poems yet.

It will be a semi-educational and semisilly event, and quite wonderful. What I do know is that we have John Ashbery being read in Burmese and Allen Ginsberg in Croation (with ukelele).

The poets are:

Zeyar Lynn (Burma)
Adisa Basic (Bosnia & Herzegovina)
Jan Wagner (Germany)
Damir Sodan (Croatia)

It’s not just Aung San Suu Kyi who’s made it out and over here.

And apols for the picture – it’s the best I could do in five minutes flat. Jan Wagner is on the cover of Poetry London, by the way – which not only launches on Saturday at Poetry Parnasus, it also contains a glowing – glowing!! – review of my very own Egg Printing Explained. So we like it.

The theme of today at Parnassus is ‘What the world sounds like’ – come along and see what it sounds like when it’s all mixed up!

Virtual Parnassus

And by the way: I know poetry-interested people in other parts of the county are feeling a bit left out this week. Sally Evans in Scotland has started a virtual poem drop, to rival Tuesday’s Rain of Poems: #twittercopter. Nikki Magennis explains:
how to take part in the poetry storm if you’re not in London: write a tweet with the url to your poem (twitter will shorten it) and include #twittercopter. you can then look up all the poems by searching #twittercopter