Given the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided to move our events online. Oxford Translation Day will now take place as online sessions over a series of weeks, culminating with the announcement of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize shortlist on 13 June.
Next week Monday (25 May), join us for a poetry reading and discussion with the Senegalese American poet and translator, Baba Badji. Badji’s first collection of poems, Ghost Letters, explores the intimacy of a private experience and belonging, focused on the momentary. In ruptured storylines, the collection investigates networks of people in different registers across mortalities, experiences of violence and hospitality, exile, history, and African myth. This event will be live-streamed via Microsoft Teams. For further details, and to register please see here: https://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/oxford-translation-day-ghost-letters-poetry-reading-baba-badji.
In Week 4 we enjoyed a reading and conversation with the poet Parwana Fayyaz, who won Best Single Poem at the Forward Prizes 2019 for her poem ‘Forty Names’, which draws both narrative and lyrical inspiration from medieval Persian traditions. Fayyaz read her translations of two very different poets from Herat, Jami and Nadia Anjuman (1980-2005), alongside her own poems.
