December 8, 2011 Thursday: 5:00 – 7:30
Posada San Francisco (across from the Jardin)
70 peso Donation * 50 pesos for Sala Members
Complimentary Wine Reception
Victoria Romero & Bill Gallacher
Victoria Romero is a prize-winning poet and teacher. In 2009, she was awarded the Guanajuato Woman of the Year Award in literature. In that same year, her poem won first place for a Spanish language poem at the World Academy of Arts and Culture and the UNESCO 29th World Congress of Poets in Budapest, Hungary.
Her work has won numerous other awards, and has been widely published, and she has presented poetry readings in Chili, Hungary, Venezuela, Ecuador, Japan, and Mexico.
Her presentation will discuss how appreciating poetry is similar to tasting fine wines and will include readings from The Chant of Chants; Omar Khayyám´s Rubaiyát and other ancient poets; plus some fragments from Walt Whitman, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda and others. She will also read from outstanding contemporary authors and show how they have inspired the story of the elixir of the Gods.
Bill Gallacher has been spent at least half the last 15 years in San Miguel de Allende. Originally from Scotland, he moved to Canada shortly after graduating in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Glasgow.
He became interested in the stock and commodity markets and has written two books on business and finance: WINNER TAKE ALL published in 1994 and THE OPTIONS EDGE published in 1998, both by McGraw Hill. He has travelled extensively in Mexico and Europe and written many articles in ATENCION, where he is usually introduced as ‘a writer of ironic works.’
He has just completed his first work of fiction, which he is presently trying to get agents to take a look at….a mystery-thriller with a strong golfing theme, entitled PREFERRED LIES. Bill has also been involved in the local theatrical scene at the Santa Anna, where he played the cuckolded husband in Harold Pinter’s BETRAYAL and Richard in Shakespeare’s RICHARD III.
He also directed a gender bending version of David Mamet’s GLEN GARRY GLEN ROSS, which he adapted for an all female cast.
Last year (and this is why he is here tonight) he produced an off-beat browsing Spanish Dictionary called NO PISE EL PASTO, with the help of a Toronto illustrator, Marilyn Bullivant. Marilyn also winters here, and you may know of from the long-running Literary Cabaret.
Tonight (hopefully with the help of Marilyn) Bill will be reading excerpts from NO PISE EL PASTO, compiled over a 35 year and on-going battle to overcome the pitfalls of the Spanish language, particularly as it has evolved in Mexico. It is a dictionary only in the sense that entries are arranged alphabetically.
To quote from his FOREWORD: ….In order for a word or phrase to make it to my ‘short list’ so-to speak, it must contain some potential for mistranslation, confusion, or amusement….. Hopefully you the audience will be able to identify with and learn from the author’s struggles to appreciate the nuances of his chosen entries, which are presented as much as possible in anecdotal fashion.