Etymological Gossip - by Uljana Wolf (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A collection of experimental essays exploring poetry, translation, and translingual imaginaries.

What if we thought of translation as a visit to a bounce house where languages jump together, trading sound and gesture, whispering their "etymological gossip" into our poems, dreams and dictionaries? In these essays (lectures, charts, cartographies) from the German poet and translator Uljana Wolf, translation comes from a translingual imagination, one that takes as its subject the "illegitimate kinships" found in language and its fractures. What comes forth is a call for our collective entanglement amidst the resurgence of monolingual, border-obsessed ideologies, at once rigorously playful and playfully rigorous.

Review Quotes

"Tongue-twisting aplomb."

--Forrest Gander

About the Author

Sophie Seita is an artist, writer, and translator. Her recent publications include: a book of art writing, Lessons of Decal, a book of experimental performance texts, My Little Enlightenment Plays, a book of criticism, Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine Communities from Dada to Digital, and a translation of Uljana Wolf's poetry, Subsisters: Selected Poems. Seita is a Lecturer in Fine Art and Director of Critical Studies at Goldsmiths and also co-runs the interdisciplinary Sound/Text Seminar through Harvard's Mahindra Center. She lives in London.