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The cover of River in an Ocean

River in an Ocean

Foreword by: Françoise Vergès

Contributions by: Rahat Kurd, Geetha Sukumaran, Nedra Rodrigo, Khairani Barokka, Yasmine Haj, Suneela Mubayi, Iryn Tushabe, Gopika Jadeja, Norah Alkharashi, Lisa Ndejuru

Edited by: Nuzhat Abbas

What are the histories, constraints, and possibilities of language in relation to bodies, origins, land, colonialism, gender, war, displacement, desire, and migration?

Moving across genres, memories, belongings, and borders, these luminous texts by poets, writers, and translators invite us to consider translation as a form of ethical and political love – one that requires attentive regard of an other – and a making and unmaking of self.

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AUTHOR

Rahat Kurd

Rahat Kurd is a writer and poet based in Vancouver. Her most recent publication, The City That Is Leaving Forever (Talonbooks 2021), is a hybrid of correspondence and poetry exchanged between Vancouver and Kashmir over a five year period with poet Sumayya Syed. Kurd’s first collection of poems, Cosmophilia, was published by Talonbooks in 2015. Kurd draws on multilingual poetics and is especially interested in the ghazal tradition in Urdu and Persian literature. With writer and poet Meredith Quartermain, Kurd co-curated and co-hosted The Rhizomatic, a monthly online poetry series featuring a single guest in a deep-dive format, from September 2020 until June 2021. Kurd was the guest editor of the 2019 Summer Supplement issue of The Puritan online literary magazine, publishing poetry and fiction around the theme, “What does it mean to be a Muslim writer?” Commissioned by composer Brian Current , Kurd’s libretto “Light Upon Light” was performed as part of an oratorio, The River of Light, at the Vancouver Opera Festival in May 2019.

AUTHOR

Geetha Sukumaran

Geetha Sukumaran, a poet and translator, is a doctoral candidate in Humanities at York University, Toronto. She holds an MPhil degree in Tamil literature. Her research interests include contemporary Tamil poetry, women’s writing, trauma literature and translation. Her current research focuses on the literature and oral narratives of women from conflict zones that connect with culinary practices, war trauma and religion. Her Tamil translation of Sylvia Plath’s poems was published in 2013 and her own poetry collection in Tamil was published in 2014.  

AUTHOR

Nedra Rodrigo

Nedra Rodrigo was born in Sri Lanka and came to Canada during the civil war. She is a translator, poet, workshop organizer at the York Centre for Asian Research, and arts educator for youth in the York Region District School Board. She is also the founder of the Tamil Studies Symposium at York University. She is the founder and current host of the bilingual, inclusive literary event, the Tam Fam Lit Jam. Nedra’s poetry and essays have been published in various anthologies. Her translation credits include the poetry of R Cheran, Puthuvai Ratnathurai, and V I S Jayapalan in the collection Human Rights and the Arts in Global Asia; the memoir In the Shadow of a Sword, published by SAGE YODA Press, India (2020); Kuna Kaviyazhakan’s “Forest That Took Poison,” shortlisted for the inaugural Global Humanities Translation Prize; and the Prison of Dreams quintet. She lives in Toronto.

AUTHOR

Nuzhat Abbas

Nuzhat Abbas is a writer, editor, and publisher. She was born in Zanzibar, and now lives in Toronto. She is the founder and director of trace press.


AUTHOR

Françoise Vergès


AUTHOR

Khairani Barokka


AUTHOR

Yasmine Haj


AUTHOR

Suneela Mubayi


AUTHOR

Iryn Tushabe


AUTHOR

Gopika Jadeja


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Norah Alkharashi


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Lisa Ndejuru


Reviews

When a feminist translator responds to her calling the world is enlarged and a better place This book is exquisite in its scope and its wellthought out approach to translation Wangui wa Goro translator of Vronique Tadjo and Ngg wa ThiongoReading these rich personal and lyrical essays allowed me to connect with the lived experience of translation each author shares not only a passion for language but also their experience with the sound taste smell music and even posture of various languages of the global South their words reflect on decolonial and feminist practices in translation while celebrating the beauty and the possibility of language its ecstasies and its efflorescence and what it means to live between tonguesDr Mehr Farooqi University of Virginia Author Ghalib A Wilderness at my DoorstepA powerful exploration of the complex and pressing issues facing translation now With a deep commitment to interrogating the act of translation from the ground up this volume tackles questions of translatability and resists regimes of monolingualism and borders These politically charged essays offer a muchneeded nourishing approach to translation bringing acute attention to the processual in translation For anyone interested in the power and politics of translation in our world today this collection is a mustreadDr Dima Ayoub Middlebury College Author Paratext and Power Modern Arabic Literature in Translation forthcoming

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Details

Dimensions:

224 Pages
8.5in * 5.5in * .56in
309.26gr

Published:

June 01, 2023

Publisher:

trace press

ISBN:

9781775256748

Book Subjects:

LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays

Featured In:

All Books

Congress 2025

Language:

eng

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