Traveling the world with the sole aim of visiting all the continents for two or three years and finding inspiration for new poems on this journey is the mission of the Canadian poet and the professor of literature Michael Dudley from Ontario, which brought him to Montenegro one month ago.
With the help of his colleagues from the Association of Literates from Bar "Nekazano", Michael was guest at the High Economic and Catering School and talked about his life, the odyssey he endeavored, haiku poetry, and what he experienced, visibly touched, and that young writers from Bar are reading his poems in the original and translated forms.
"It is a great pleasure to be here, in fact, I did not even plan to be in Montenegro, as my trip altogether has no plan, except the next state I'm going to visit. On my journey, my 'pilgrimage', which should take two to three years, I plan to visit all the continents, and the choice of the route depends on the weather and political conditions in the region where I am," Dudley said.
He started his journey eight months ago, by the most logical route from Canada - right to Greenland, where he spent two months, then the same time on the "neighbor" island - Iceland, which he says has incredible landscapes and is completely different from Canada. He continued his Scandinavian tour with a two-month stay in Denmark, where he explored the ancient connections of that country with Greenland, and then "jumped" to the south, to Croatia.
“In elementary school I had a teacher who emigrated from Yugoslavia to Canada, whom I loved and with whom I talked a lot about Yugoslavia, so I knew what to expect in Croatia. The last Croatian station was Dubrovnik, from where I went to Montenegro for which I was not prepared, but I visited the whole Boka Bay, Podgorica, Cetinje, Niksic, Budva, Virpazar. Now I'm with my colleagues, writers from Bar, and I want to see St. Stefan and Ulcinj. Croatia and Montenegro are very similar not only in geography and history but they also have this kind of; I would say, friendliness of the people living here, that familiarity."
At Garo in "Duklja" in the renowned bohemian and artist gathering, in the company of the colleagues from "Nekazano" - Labud Loncar, Srdjan Lekovic and Stevan Stijovic, Michael reveals the most enormous wealth he gains by travelling the world.
"The people! Always the people and everywhere people. Relationships that are created in these contacts on the road are immeasurable treasures, resulting in friendships, impressions for new poems, always new and inspirational."
The father of three children that was born in Toronto proudly said that it is a large city of small communities and a multicultural capital of Canada, on which streets daily communication is carried out in more than 120 languages.
He taught literature for the last 33 years, of which 30 years in one school in the rural, western Ontario. His poems have been published in several countries of the world in books, newspapers, magazines and anthologies, and he is a member of the association "Haiku Canada".
"Haiku is the most specific kind of poetry. All the other genres are characterized by the author's vision, a poet transmitted to the reader, and in haiku poetry, the imprint is created in the reader itself, because the haiku is so imaginative that it is based on images and scenes that it causes. And, yes, it must be created in one breath, two breaths are too long for the birth of a haiku poem," Michael presented his masterpiece in the High School students in Bar.
Answers the questions of students regarding how his stay in Montenegro is inspirational and how many poems he wrote here, the Canadian first showed a big diary in which he records the most diverse observations daily.
"I will come back to these notes later, read all of them, and based on them create poems, so in Montenegro, I record what I see, hear, feel ... There are no poems yet, sometimes from the first to the last hand there are some fifty versions.”
When he closes the covers of the Montenegrin chapter of his poetic-travel adventure, a new destination will undoubtedly be the "southern coast".
“Firstly, it will probably be Albania, and then Greece. I was thinking about Cyprus too... Let's see where the road will take me."
Text by Radomir Petric, on February 11th 2019, read more at Vijesti
