PoetryFest at IAC Feature Chinese born Poet Sally Wen Mao and Irish Poet Tara Begin

My first exposure to poetry reading (other than slam poetry) was at today's PoetryFest at the Irish Arts Center (IAC).  The first of many more to come.  I was delighted & surprised by both female poets.  I anticipated only Irish poets.  Sally Wen Mao (b China) was raised in Boston & San Francisco.  Her collection MAD HONEY SYMPOSIUM received the 2012 Kinerth Gensler Award.  She read poetry from that & OCULUS to be published in 2018.  She's young and diffident.   Her hesitant & apologetic start was disarming.   Mao said she was glad she was unable to see out into the audience.  Her timid disposition contrasted with her gut punching prose, seditious reflections on her Chinese lineage and the plight of immigrants.   Sally referenced her poems origins prior to reading.  The 1st was saturated with references to blood, slaughter and a barren dystopian land.   She wrote it after the 2016 election using only words never included in a Presidential Inauguration.  RADIATION GIRL expresses her sadness at being rebuffed by her aunt after she visited Japan.  Her aunt warned her not to travel to Japan or touch the Pacific Ocean for fear of radiation contamination.  The ebullience for Japan's natural beauty and immersion in the ocean were pained by her aunt's fear & harsh rebuke.  "Beauty's hazards are real.  I am a mermaid of the ocean".  Mao's timidity aside, she maintained a friendly banter.  "On the internet I saw my face attached to an ad 'Why do people see ghosts'".  This startled her & lead her to consider her aging parents living apart & on their own.  The melancholy poem read "Love has a way of not existing.  Our bloodline ends with my lifeline."  Mae shared a poem from OCULUS titled Anna Mae Wong, a Chinese Amer. actress in the 1920s-30s stereotyped as a maid or murder victim.  It addresses prejudice.  A school girl of Asian heritage eats alone & tormented in class.  A white classmate prods her with needles "Do Asians feel pain as we do?"  This references Shakespeare's Shylock who asks "If you cut us do we not bleed."   Tara Begin read 2nd.  She was born in Ireland.  Begin spoke & recited assuredly with an appealing Irish brogue.  Begin read mainly from her new book THE TRAGIC DEATH of ELEANOR MARX shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize Best Collection 2017.   Begin is fascinated with Marx since both have made translations of Flaubert's MADAME BOVERY.  Eleanor committed suicide by taking arsenic the same as did Madame Bovery.  "Madame Bovery's favorite flower are all flowers & favorite color white.  Eleanor's favorite flavor is the orchid and favorite color night."   Begin's other poems were bold and irreverent.  Her polished reading was pleasant to the ear.  But, I preferred the shared intimacy of Mao's readings.  Needless, I enjoyed the poetry readings and will seek out future Poetry Festivals.