Last Friday, 19th of April, on the occasion of the American Poetry and Jazz Appreciation month, members of the U.S Embassy and Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry celebrated together with an American poetry reading accompanied by jazz music at the American center at City library.

U.S. Ambassador Michael S. Klecheski read his favorite poems from well-known American poet Robert Frost and Nathasha Trethewey and his translator Mrs. Tuul translated them into Mongolian.

Mongolian poet G.Mend-Ooyo has been the director of the Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry since 2005, and has since been working closely with the American Embassy in Ulaanbaatar. In 2010 and 2011, the Academy published two volumes of American Poetry collections in Mongolian. At the reading, they read some translations from the volumes and read the newly translated works too. Poet Mend-Ooyo read the Letters from the Ming Dynasty by Joseph Brodsky and Shining Horses by Robert Ness.

At his opening of the reading he mentioned the poetry history the between two countries.

The following is an excerpt of his opening speech.

“The previous US Ambassadors to Mongolia, Mr.Mark Minton and Jonathan Addleton are so closely involved with literature and poetry. In their time, we published those two volumes and we had an event of American-Mongolian poetry reading during the visiting of distinguished poet David Lehman. Also when we establishing Arts Council of Mongolia in 2002, there was several cultural figures from the US that gave us beneficial advice. One of those visitors was Robert Ness. Here, I will be reading his poem Shining Horses, which he wrote during his first visit to Mongolia. Then at the board meeting of ACM, Mr.Ganhuyag made a verbal and I made the lyrical translation of the poem. Nowadays, the poem’s title is used as the name of the art grant named for Peter Morrow, who was one of our cultural collaborators at the ACM board.”



Mongolian poets and translators read the translations:  D.Urinkhai read House Guest by Elizabeth Bishop, Ts.Oyundary read Yes, I have a thousand tongues by Stephen Crane and Fish Out Of Water by Louis Jenkins, B.Bayasgalan read The Niagara River by Kay Ryan, G.Delgermaa read  Woods, A Prose Sonnet by Ralph Waldo Emerson and O.Munkhnaran read  Twenty-Eight Pieces by Pamela Hart.