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Ángelo Néstore had never read poetry in front of an English-speaking audience before April 8. After reading their work in Spanish, at the end of the Zoom event — around 1 a.m. in Málaga, Spain, where Néstore lives — they answered questions from the audience in English.

Despite feeling exhausted from the time difference and answering questions in English, Néstore felt privileged to have a platform to share their poetry through Point of Contact Gallery’s Cruel April poetry series. They also were relieved that the audience liked the poems enough to ask them questions.

April is National Poetry Month, and for the 14th year, Point of Contact Gallery will release their annual poetry collection “Corresponding Voices.” Along with the release of its latest collection, the gallery is hosting virtual poetry readings every Thursday, and on one select Friday, in April. Attendees register online and can expect to hear new poetry that the poets have been working on since May 2020.

This year’s poets include two who live in the Syracuse area, Arthur Flowers Jr. and David Lloyd.

Flowers, who is a Syracuse University associate professor emeritus, novelist, essayist and performance poet, will present performance poetry on Thursday. Unlike the other guests reading poetry, Flowers does not consider himself a poet.

He uses instruments in his reading, incorporates blues music and includes some improvisation in his stories, which is why Sara Felice, director of Point of Contact, considers his event more of a performance than a poetry reading.

“When you do performance, you are taking the audience, and you are trying to take them to a different level of understanding about reality and about how they function in the world,” Flowers said.

Another Syracuse native participating in the Cruel April readings is Lloyd, an English professor at Le Moyne College. At 14, Lloyd started writing poetry and is publishing his fourth collection of poems, “The Body’s Compass,” later this year.

The topics in Lloyd’s poetry focus on animals like birds, cows and beavers, along with natural elements like wind, fire and water.

“The poems I’ll be reading are about the environment, locally where I live and globally, so I’m delighted that my reading date is Earth Day,” Lloyd said over email.

For previous Cruel April readings hosted before the pandemic, poets traveled to Syracuse to participate in live events. Felice said that hosting the event on Zoom this year made it easier on international poets since they did not have to worry about jet lag.

However, the difficulty of hosting the events on Zoom is scheduling times that are accessible for the poets and audiences both in the U.S. and internationally.

Point of Contact board of directors member Josefa Álvarez thought this would be challenging for Ada Salas — who starts her reading at 11 p.m on April 23 in Spain. Still, Salas is excited.

“I thought, ‘Well, 12 is going to be very late for her, but she was happy,’” Álvarez said. “She was very excited to do this, to present her poetry in the United States.”

Felice added that the virtual platform has allowed for international audience members to attend — boosting the overall turnout. The Point of Contact staff will likely make the virtual screening a permanent addition.

One of the important aspects of the event is the bilingual component, where Spanish poems are translated into English and vice versa. Lloyd said translating his poems went wonderfully because he worked with his colleague and Le Moyne College associate professor of Spanish Orlando Ocampo.

Néstore also worked with Ocampo to translate their poems from Spanish to English. Ocampo analyzed their work instead of translating the poem word for word, they said. Néstore liked working with Ocampo because he would ask them to describe the meaning they wanted to convey in the poem before translating it into English.

“He decided to use one word or another word in English, and I think that’s art because eventually, he decided the word,” Néstore said. “It’s very important because you may have infinite translations of a point.”

Néstore thought Ocampo was creating his own art because the translated poem took on meaning through Ocampo’s perspective. In the Q&A part of their event, Néstore told the audience, “Translation is an art. When you are translating poetry, you are writing poetry.”

Álvarez and Kathy Everly, a professor of Spanish literature at SU, who teamed up this year to edit this year’s “Corresponding Voices,” are already preparing for next year’s volume of the collection and poetry series. The two said they hope to continue expanding the regions they invite poets from. Álvarez hinted that she’ll invite a poet she’s been following for over a year from Columbia, while Everly is interested in exploring Moroccan poets who work in Spain.

“(Spanish) is a common language, but with differences,” Alvarez said. “It’s important to show that to the American readers and to show them that all of them have different perspectives from their own culture.”

Published on April 14, 2021 at 10:48 pm

Contact Louis: louis@dailyorange.com | @JBL__98