The Casper College Literary Conference presents "Spiritual Warriors" Oct. 17-19 on the CC campus. Professional writers from across the globe will present readings and workshops. Here's a profile of one of those presenters:Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. She's a 26-year-old poet whose work has been translated into several European languages and published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Famed throughout Europe for her remarkable reading performances, Valzhyna is the winner of poetry competitions in Belarus, as well as the Crystal of Velenica Award for reading performance in Slovenia. Valzhyna’s first collection, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes (2005), is startlingly assured and reveals a powerful poetic voice. Her first U.S. book, Factory of Tears, is forthcoming by Copper Canyon Press in the spring of 2008. Valzhyna reads her poems aloud in both Belarusian and English, the former a means of retaining and saving her native language from previous government attempts to absorb Belarusian into the Russian language. In addition, this young author speaks about "The Politics of Language" and "The Poetry of Revolution," specifically addressing the poetry of anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe from the 1970s to the 1990s, a period when poets became prophets for their nations and when poetry, the only voice of freedom, had to be carefully hidden, because poetry was considered both a sin and a weapon. In a humanizing view of history, Valzhyna looks at poems written at the time of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity Movement in Poland. She also addresses the overlapping political and poetic scenes in regard to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the current situation in Belarus. As Franz Wright notes, listening to Valzhyna is simply "electrifying."
we grew up in a country where
your door is first stroked with chalk
and then at dark there comes a chariot
and no one sees you any more
(from Belarusian II)
For more about the conference, or to register for one of the workshops, go to http://www.caspercollege.edu/events/literary/
