Black in Multiple Languages Symposium is a free two-day virtual gathering of poets, scholars, and translators exploring Black expression across linguistic, cultural, and hemispheric contexts. This symposium considers the shared notions of Black being, Black joy, and expression in multiple languages.
Curatorial Invocation:
Think of a dream in which scholars, poets, and psalmists gather to meditate on Blackness not as a category of asphyxiating containment, but as a garden of ancestral flowers, an orchard of clustered red bottlebrush shrubs, pomegranate trees, trees of Libson limes, Satsuma Mandarins, date palms, mangoes, and guavas. Each fruit on these trees contains a seed that contains the last fragment of an almost extinct language. Imagine that these poets, scholars, and psalmists are gathered in this orchard around a map which contains not the names of countries, but names of different languages, languages which contain fragments of other languages, which contain fragments of other pasts and therefore other futures. Languages which contain stolen ancestors and lost migrants, and return them, however briefly, to those they are stolen from. Each poet suddenly hears what their name means, but in a different language.
Curated by Gbenga Adesina, PhD
Symposium Schedule
April 17
A Keynote Featuring Poet John Keene
9:20-10:30 AM EST
Panel A
10:45 - 12:15 PM EST
Our panel conversations bring together poets, scholars, and translators working across Black languages and global diasporic traditions. Across multiple panels, speakers will reflect on their multilingual practices and the creative, ethical, and cultural questions that shape translation.
Each session includes brief presentations followed by a moderated conversation and audience Q&A.
Panel titles and full descriptions will be announced closer to the symposium.
Translation Workshops (application + $15 fee required)*
12:45 PM - 2:30 PM EST
*Applying for a translation workshop will automatically register you for general attendance.
Intro to Translation
No prior translation experience is required. This session is designed for participants who are interested in learning how translation works—the practical, ethical, and imaginative logistics of moving poems across languages. Led by Pelumi Adejumo, this workshop offers an accessible entry point into translation as a creative and intellectual practice.
Participants will explore foundational concepts, experiment with guided prompts, and engage in conversation about what it means to translate within a Black diasporic literary tradition.
Application requirement:
A brief application including a 250‑word statement describing your interest in translation and how you hope to benefit from the workshop.
Advanced Translation
This session is intended for translators with demonstrated experience—those who are already working on literary translation projects or who have an established practice. Led by Gregory Pardlo, the workshop offers space for deeper discussions of craft, shared challenges, ethical considerations, and generative mentorship.
Participants will reflect on their ongoing projects, explore advanced strategies, and engage in collaborative thinking about translation across Black languages and global Black traditions.
Application requirement:
A brief application including a 250‑word statement describing your current translation practice, project(s), and what you hope to gain from the advanced session.
Submit your application today!
April 18, 2026
Panel B
10:45 - 12:15 PM EST
Our panel conversations bring together poets, scholars, and translators working across Black languages and global diasporic traditions. Across multiple panels, speakers will reflect on their multilingual practices and the creative, ethical, and cultural questions that shape translation.
Each session includes brief presentations followed by a moderated conversation and audience Q&A.
Panel titles and full descriptions will be announced closer to the symposium.
A Multilingual Poetry Performance
11:30 - 1:30PM EST
Our multilingual performance brings together all of the featured poets who write and think across several languages. Each poet will read original work in the languages they carry, without necessarily requiring English translation.
As part of the performance ritual, poets will introduce one another by sharing brief translations of a fellow artist’s work, creating a chain of connection across languages and lineages.
Featured Poets
John Keene (Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, Latin) - John Keene is the award-winning author, co-author, co-editor, and translator of multiple books, including Punks: New & Selected Poems (2021), which received the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry, the 2022 Thom Gunn Award, and a 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He has translated poetry and fiction by an array of writers, including Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer, which Pushkin Press published in a revised edition in 2025. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, he is Board of Governors Professor of English and Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies at Rutgers University-Newark.
Gregory Pardlo (English, Chinese, Danish) - Gregory Pardlo is the author of Spectral Evidence, a Finalist for the 2025 Kingsley Tufts Prize and longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award. His collection Digest was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His other books include Totem and Air Traffic, a memoir in essays. His honors include fellowships from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He divides his time between New York and the United Arab Emirates, where he is Head of the Literature and Creative Writing Program at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Pelumi Adejumo (English, Dutch, Yoruba) - Pelumi Adejumo is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She studied Creative Writing at ArtEZ and obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Dutch Art Institute. Her practice explores the relationships between multilingualism, the body, mythology, and collective memory, often through sound, performance, and poetry. In 2023, she received the Frans Vogel Poetry Prize for her multilingual work, and in 2025/2026, she was one of the residents at the MacDowell Fellowship in New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in, among others, Point de Chute, Furious Flower IV, Museum Arnhem, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, A Tale of A Tub, and Savvy Contemporary.
Jason Allen-Paissant (English, French, Jamaican Patois) - Jason Allen-Paisant is a poet and writer from Jamaica. Among other things, his work asks how we keep living, sensing, and loving in the aftermath ofcolonial and ecological rupture. His second poetry collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, won the ForwardPrize for Best Collection and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2023. He is also the author of the philosophical treatise Engagements with Aimé Césaire. A book-length poem, SNOW, is forthcoming with Penguin in 2027. He teaches critical theory and creative writing at the University of Manchester and is currently a Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. He and his family live in Leeds, UK.
Asha Salim (English, Italian, Swahili) - Asha Salim is an Afro-Italian writer, scholar, poet, and strategist of Somali and Tanzanian heritage. She is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship and the Zegna Founder’s Scholarship and is currently pursuing an MFA at Temple University in Philadelphia. Her research and creative practice center Black Southern womanhood, diasporic identities, and the lived experiences of women of African descent across the Global South. She has written for and contributed to leading fashion and cultural publications, including Vogue Italia, C41 Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Africa e Mediterraneo.
Arielle John (English, Spanish, Creole) - Arielle M. John, best known for her work as a writer, performer, and community organizer, is tired of introducing herself by labels and accomplishments that serve to illuminate her relationship to capitalism and its trifling cousins, in a world navigating instability andrelentless transformation. Arielle does her best to centre love and compassion as her central practice and is always delighted whenever art emerges from her creative connection to life.
Sihle Ntuli (English and Zulu) - Sihle Ntuli is a South African poet, editor and curator born and living in Durban, South Africa. His poetry has been featured in notable journals such as Wasafiri, Poetry Ireland Review, ADDA Stories, HERRI & Ußwali . His writing has been supported through fellowships and residencies by the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies in South Africa, The Centre for Stories in Australia, The Caselberg Trust in collaboration with the Dunedin UNESCO city of Literature in New Zealand and Literaturhaus Wien in Austria. He is a 2024 Best of the Net winner and the winner of the 2024/2025 Diann Blakely Poetry Competition. His most recent release is the poetry collection Owele (2025) published by uHlanga.
Lorna Goodison (English, Jamaican Patois) - Lorna Goodison, former Poet Laureate of Jamaica (2017–2020), is a major voice in contemporary world literature. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and Jamaica’s Musgrave Gold Medal. Her memoir From Harvey River won the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Goodison is the author of twelve poetry collections, three books of short stories, and the acclaimed Collected Poems (2017). Her work appears in leading anthologies such as the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry and has been translated into multiple languages. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan and holds honorary degrees from the University of the West Indies and the University of Toronto.
