The quaint Guerlac Room in the A.D. White House was packed yesterday evening. Students and faculty from a host of different departments along with members of the Ithaca community lined the walls and spilled out into the hallway and adjacent room. For one night, work was set aside for the enjoyment of “Poetry and Pastry,” a semi-annual event presented by the department of near eastern studies consisting of musical performances and poetry readings in Near Eastern and Mediterranean languages.

Undergraduates, graduates, faculty and Ithacan poets performed in a variety of different languages including Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian, Assamese, Swahili, Russian, Egyptian and Icelandic.

“The idea is to bring people together, it’s not about reading ‘my poem in my language,’ its about exposing people to other literatures,” said Prof. Shawkat Toorawa, near eastern studies, the principal initiator in organizing the event.

“We’ve never had this many readers,” said Toorawa, who was caught off guard by the large turnout.

Poetry and Pastry, which is typically held in the spring, was not held last year. Organization of the event falls upon the initiative of graduate students or faculty members like Toorawa.

Unlike previous years, the event was opened up to include Ithaca poets. “Poetry doesn’t get enough of an airing,” Toorawa said.

Toorawa also highlighted another purpose of the event: to promote foreign languages. “People can actually come and hear a Turkish poem read out … it makes it real, especially when students learning the language can perform,” he said.

When questioned about the significance of performing poetry in its native tongue, another organizer of the event, Maude Rith, responded: “I think it gets the speaker closer to the language.”

Rith, who is an administrative assistant in the department of near eastern studies, added that translations can also lose some of their original meaning. “To read [the poem] in the language it was intended for, you have the richness of the authors intent,”she said.

The event also aimed to bring together academics across disciplines. Additional collaborators of “Poetry and Pastry” included the Society for the Humanities, the French Studies Program, the Mediterranean Studies Initiative, the department of English and the department of comparative literature.

“I like the fact that all the different people with their different languages got together. It’s also not often that you see people from different departments coming out to have fun and enjoy themselves … this was a good opportunity,” said Louissa Oburra grad, a native speaker of Swahili. She sang a poem titled “Nimezama” (I am Drowning), chosen particularly because of her partiality towards Taarab, an Indian influenced style of Swahili.Snaps all around: Members of the Cornell Middle Eastern and mediterranean Music Ensemble play at “Poetry & Pastry” at the A.D. White House yesterday.

Another reader, former Cornell Professor of Old French and Occitan Alice Colby-Hall, noted that hearing poetry read had special benefits. “You don’t have a sense of the beauty of the original if you read it with your eyes but you don’t hear it. You don’t appreciate it fully as poetry.

The eclectic event also drew in students for a variety of reasons. Alexia Margaritis ’10 attended for none other than her simple enjoyment of poetry.

Daniel Blake ’11, currently studying Arabic, came to support classmates who were reading. He remarked that he enjoyed the experience of being exposed to different languages and gained an appreciation for the number of languages out there. “It’s easy to forget that when you’re here in America,” he said.

The department of near eastern studies plans to continue holding Poetry and Pastry. Toorawa said he hopes that next year the event will receive the same amount of support from the different departments and will open up to include even more kinds of poetry submission across disciplines. However despite the flexibility of what next year may bring, he said, pastries are always an important part of the event.