MARIA JASTRZEBSKA

 For me the magic of the pRo tour is the magic of how poetry crosses borders and boundaries between countries, between generations. That never ceases to amaze me and keeps me going as a poet. I enjoyed the poetry appreciation group we went to together in Kent. How lovely to be bathed in the sound of all those poems and to be with a bunch of people who love reading poetry. Poetry is such a poor relation of the arts in the U.K, you can end up wondering why you are a poet sometimes. Then we got such a warm welcome in Cambridge. For me as a poet it was a real honour to hear my work in another language and to hear you and Elena reading everything in the Romanian translations, especially as Romanian is a language people in the U.K rarely get a chance to hear. The audience were really up for it and the open mike session was brilliant, especially the young man who entered into the spirit of the translation theme by reciting a poem by Lermontov in Yiddish.