Event Type
In a time of overwhelming language extinction, as histories are rewritten by the powerful, as war and resource extraction threaten both lives and legacies, literary translation is an act of both defense and resistance. This roundtable brings together two co-editors and two contributors to the 2026 edition of the Best Literary Translations series for a discussion and reading of poetry in translation. (Best Literary Translations 2026, the third edition in the annual series, was guest edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze and will be published the week of the New Orleans Poetry Festival.) All four panel participants translate poetry from languages that have been minoritized: Braj Bhasha, Yoruba, and several lenguas originarias (First Nations languages) in Latin America. Panelists will discuss how poetry in translation from less frequently translated languages pushes back against the xenophobia and racism so prevalent in the U.S. today.
