The Translingual Verse: Migration, Rhythm, and Resistance in Contemporary Italophone Poetry - Transcript

In this innovative study, Alice Loda explores migration and translingualism in contemporary poetry, focusing on the work of three migrant poets in Italy: Gëzim Hajdari (from Albania), Barbara Pumhösel (from Austria), and Hasan Atiya Al Nassar (from Iraq). She shows that translingualism has particular effects on poetic rhythm and style, and argues that linguistic heterodoxy creates imaginative spaces in which various kinds of textual and aesthetic resistance can be enacted. Loda outlines the distinctiveness of the Italian scene, where plurilingualism has nourished centuries of literary production, and connects her argument to current debates about migrant writing and world literatures in other contexts. The Translingual Verse is the first monograph in English to be dedicated to translingual migrant poetics in contemporary Italy.

Alice Loda is Lecturer in International Studies and Global Societies at the University of Technology Sydney.