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	Podcast:		World Views from KGOU
	Episode:		Belarus’ Valzhyna Mort Details Her Passion For Poetry, The Power Of Language
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:
	Publish Date:		2018-02-07 14:14:20
	Description:		Valzhyna Mort grew up in Belarus as the Soviet Union collapsed, and she’s spent her entire career using poetry to dispel misconceptions and bring her country out of Russia’s shadow. “A great myth was that it was a really big reading nation, and I don’t know if it was really true, in terms of how much reading was done,” Mort told KGOU’s World Views. “But it’s certainly true that every household had a library. No matter what your parents did, how educated they were, you had a library.” She played with books the same way she played with dolls, indiscriminately read prose and poetry, and started writing the way most children do – to try to put their imagination to paper. But she says poetry is nothing like everyday language. It’s concerned with finesse and detail. “We order coffee, and we don’t want to be brought a cup of tea. We want to be understood very quickly,” Mort said. “But a poem is not concerned with utilitarian aspect of language. It has an anthropological approach to language.
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