In our discussions of poetry we try to focus on dynamic relationship between the oral and textual histories of poetry.
This reading list was contributed by Dr Anna Bernard and challenges the choice between nation and transnationalism that has often seemed central to theorizations of world literature, but which has tended to bypass internationalist networks of anti-colonial writers working within discrete national contexts.
Assistant Professor Levi Thompson (University of Colorado, Boulder) offers a reading list to re-orient conceptions of modernism, drawing on East-East exchanges.
Laetitia Zecchini discusses the politics of literary translation and publication, particularly surrounding the journal Quest funded by the International Council for Cultural Freedom, itself backed by the CIA. She examined the editor Nissim Ezekiel’s own positions and motivations, noting that for him Quest’s purpose was the create the conditions in which the magazine would provide the freedom to debate, argue, and hold different theoretical positions, creating a space of cultural independence which could in turn realise political independence.
Barks looks to create a rendition of Rumi that is intelligible to him. This endeavor manifests as a form of Orientalism, however subtle: it is Barks’ project to create Rumi and Rumi's poetry in his own image.
Photograph of Afgoye, Somalia from 2013 (source: Wiki Commons) Mohamed A. Eno is professor and dean of African Studies at St. Clements University in Mogadishu, Somalia. His groundbreaking work uses literature, especially folk poetry, to challenge the myth of a homogenous Somalia and to expose the exclusion and
Tedros Abraham takes us on a journey across time and continents, comparing the way three women poets in Ancient Greece, India and Eritrea claim immortality through their poems and rebel against social norms
In the second of our series on concrete poetry, MULOSIGE's Jack Clift speaks to poet and artist Morten Søndergaard about his latest work, Wall of Dreams
Poetry doesn't need to be completely understood to be experienced, making it an ideal medium for multilingual expression. Here multimodal artist Kwame Write talks to MULOSIGE about the language of water and about multilingualism in his life and work.
What happens when a text from 17th century India passes through a double translation over the next two centuries? Qurratulain Hyder's translation of Hasan Shah's The Nautch Girl reveals some of the changes that occur when texts move across time and space.
In this podcast Dr Anna Bernard (King's College London) examines internationalist world literature by returning to a previous moment in world literary history: a selection of English-language poetry anthologies that were circulated within the anti-apartheid and Palestine solidarity movements in Britain in the 1970s and early 1980s.
