I read out the little bit of Neruda translation that I posted here before, and preface it with a little spiel about how much I like him. An Indonesian woman came up to me afterwards, and it turns out she is the biggest Neruda fan ever. She's learning Spanish just so she can read Neruda in the original, and she has set up a Pablo Neruda society in Jakarta (he was Chilean consul in Batavia - now Jakarta - in the 1930s). Very interesting.
The other person I spoke to was a young woman performance poet from N. Ireland who I thought was great. Her name is Catherine Brogan and here is her YouTube channel. I think the best work I saw her do was The Omagh Ah, which is about the bombings. This is a better video of the same poem, but it's rotated 90 degrees for some reason. None of those really capture how energetic and engaging she was, performing right in front of you. Her work is something like rap, but using the rhythm of a Northern Irish voice.
And you might like this one about St Catherine and the pagan martyr Hypatia. I think she is more nervous in that performance than she was last night, because it's a book launch.