AN IT EXPERT who speaks fluent Klingon says he is “incredibly proud” that a poem he has written in the intergalactic language from Star Trek will be set to music at a festival.

The poem, created by Wrexham man Alex Greene, will be performed at the Bangor Music Festival at Pontio on Saturday, February 3 by an ensemble of university music students.

Space is Fierce is about the untamed universe and going into the dark unknown.

Accompanying music has been written by American master’s degree student Ellie Brooke, 24, and has been commissioned by the festival’s artistic director, Guto Pryderi Puw, head of composition at Bangor University.

Alex Greene says the “out of this world” premiere at Bangor Music Festival will mean as much to him as winning the bardic chair at the National Eisteddfod.He has been a huge Star Trek fan since childhood and began learning Klingon in the 1980s.

He is one of only a handful of people in the UK able to converse in the alien tongue.

“I’m very proud of my Welsh heritage, but have a poem of mine, written in Klingon and set to music, really is like winning the lottery or a national eisteddfod,” he said. “I’m incredibly proud.

“The poem is really about memories. I started learning Klingon as I always loved Star Trek and I also love languages.”

Klingon has 26 letters and uses similar vowels and consonants to the ones used in English.

A Klingon dictionary was published in 1985 and has 5,000 words which, with prefixes and sub-prefixes, expand its content to 48,000 words.

Around 12,000 people across Europe have learned Klingon and there are many more than that across the US.

Greene has also written English and Welsh versions of his Space is Fierce poem so that others who are not fluent in Klingon can understand the original version.

He has also been busy helping lots of people to learn Klingon through his blog, The Daily Klingon, which has 1,000 followers. It features verb and noun drills and teaches popular Klingon phrases. For more information, visit www.bangormusicfestival.org.uk