Book readings generally start the same way: there’s a welcome, an introduction, and then the author reads from his or her work. But from the beginning, I could tell the first event of the Creative Writing Program’s 2008 Fall Reading Series would be different.
“There are some places in the world, where if you put a pen to paper, they put a gun to your head,” said Professor Emeritus of English Lamar Herrin. He was introducing Irakli Kakabadze (left), a writer in residence of Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA), an organization that brings threatened authors to the area for two years and provides them and their families with housing and other support. Cornell employs these authors part-time, and Kakabadze is a visiting professor in the government department. In his native Georgia, he had been jailed five times and beaten for his pacifist beliefs and political novels, plays, and poetry. (Click here for a podcast interview with Kakabadze.) If a person with this background was not enough to electrify the room, Herrin’s introduction did.
Amidst applause, Kakabadze took the stage of Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall. He is tall and thin, and that afternoon he wore a neat pinstripe suit that looked about a size too big. He removed his jacket, and nervously tried to adjust the microphone to the right height, finally asking for help. Kakabadze’s jitters vanished once he began to read.
He pumped his fist and pointed his finger; his voice boomed and softened with the ebb of his satirical story of love in Georgia. Although his work had been translated into English specifically for this reading, and although his thick accent sometimes got in the way of his words, his passion and biting sense of humor conveyed his meaning. To his left a violinist and a percussionist accented Kakabadze’s wit and drama and further bridged the language gap. After reading from a story, he half-sang, half-chanted a poem, first in his native language, then in English. The poem had been set to music; the recording played in the background and its lyrics echoed Kakabadze’s words.
At the end, the audience was his. After going to the reading, I am certain ICOA has chosen to protect and foster a deserving writer.