Colloquy: Violent Phenomena

Please join us at the CUNY Graduate Center for the latest installment of with readings and discussion from Madhu Kaza, Elisa Taber, and Hamid Roslan on their recent work for . The event will be introduced and moderated by C. Francis Fisher.

Kaza, Taber, and Roslan will share from their recent translations and essays followed by a conversation conducted by Fisher. Colloquy is an event series presented by World Poetry Books in collaboration with Montez Press Radio and partnering event spaces which invites translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation.
Date & time: Thursday, November 21st from 6:30pm to 8pm
Location: The Skylight Room (9100), the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave, NYC.
Free and open to all. Please register to attend.

Born in Andhra Pradesh, India, Madhu H. Kaza is a writer, translator, artist and educator based in New York City. She is a translator of the feminist Telugu writers Volga and Vimala. Political Stories, her co-translation of a collection of Volga’s fiction was published in 2007 in India; other translations and original writing have appeared in Gulf Coast, Guernica, Waxwing, Chimurenga, The Encyclopedia Project, Two Lines and more. She recently edited Kitchen Table Translation, a volume that explores the connections between migration and translation and which features immigrant, diasporic and poc translators. She was the founding director of the Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library, where she now serves as faculty advisor to the program, and she also teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University.

Hamid Roslan is the co-editor of The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian & Singaporean Writing (Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2023), and author of in all the places I could not find you (self-published, 2022) and parsetreeforestfire (Ethos Books, 2019), a finalist for the Singapore Literature Prize 2020. His poetry has appeared in New Singapore Poetries (Gaudy Boy Press, 2022), the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s Transpacific Literary Project, minarets, The Volta, Of Zoos and the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, among others. His essay contributions can be found in Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays in Translation (Tilted Axis Press, 2022) and Practice, Research & Tangential Activities (PR&TA) journal. He graduated with an MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute.

Elisa Taber is a doctoral candidate at McGill University. She writes and translates herself into an absent presence. An Archipelago in a Landlocked Country is her first book. Her translations include Horacio Quiroga’s Beyond and Miguelángel Meza’s Dream Pattering Soles. With Susy Delgado and Liliana Ancalao, she edited Guarani- and Mapudungun-language issues for Words Without Borders. With Tom Melick, she edits Slug. Elisa lives between Montréal and Asunción, where she is completing an ethnography of contemporary Jopara literature.

C. Francis Fisher received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Yale Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Her poem, “Self-Portrait at 25”, was selected for the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize. She has been supported by fellowships from The Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. She curates Colloquy, an event series that provides a forum for translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation. In the Glittering Maw is her first book of translations.

This event is organized and co-sponsored by World Poetry Books, Montez Press Radio, and the Center for the Humanities with Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Skylight Room (9100), The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, United States