Launch: Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues - Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani

Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani’s groundbreaking poetry collection Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues presents the reader with thirty-five multilingual poems in English, French and Croatian structurally interwoven with thirteen visual-textual fragments and three poems-tattoos or “tattooed” drawings through the narrative device of “enchâssement” (embedding). Using the universal languages of the heart/love/music/rhythm the author seamlessly transgresses borders and provides us with a poignant, evocative, and fully inclusive, immersive experience. The recurring tropes of falling, absence, and loss, and the evocation of a fourth “shadow language” signify the narrator’s displacement from ‘home’ and language, whilst at the same time questioning the identity discourses of nostalgia, belonging and exile. Here, the central image of the “knitting drum machines for exiled tongues” can be interpreted both as an innovative artistic practice allowing the revival of lost and / or exiled languages, and as an enabling device for the (re-)coding of multilingual language patterns in which “poetry of the mind breaks free”.

Reviews

"In Knitting Drum Machines for Exiled Tongues, ‘harmonies’ are ‘sounding out’ spectrums of sonic frequencies, attempting to connect self/others. Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani brilliantly raises the old sword of the bard battling both the silences within herself and which plague us all – the ‘mutisms’ at the ‘edges’, our own wilderness being contained.” (Jennifer K. Dick, author of, most recently, That Which I Touch Has No Name (2022))

“Shaped from three very different languages and cultures the poems of Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues shimmer with the interwoven colours of saying and the fragile materialities of silence and of loss.” (Lyndon Davies, editor Aquifer Press)

Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani is a London-based poet, arts practitioner and researcher of Croatian/Algerian heritage born in Zagreb. Her multilingual poems in English, French and Croatian have appeared in various UK magazines including Molly Bloom, Pamenar Press, Tears in the Fence and The Fortnightly Review, and in literary journals and magazines in Canada and Croatia. She is the founder of the collaborative poetry project “Unbound” that received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Language Acts and Worldmaking Small grants programme in 2018 and 2019. Jasmina has (co-)directed several multilingual poetry recitals and performances in London between 2019 and 2022 and has given talks and published essays on multilingual poetry practice, both nationally and internationally.

Her second multilingual poetry collection Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues was published in 2022 (Dorset: Tears in the Fence). The multilingual poetry performance "Heart Monologues" was premiered in London in March 2022; it will be repeated in Paris and Pula (21 March 2023, Paris, France & 13 April 2023, Pula, Croatia).

Learn more about Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani on her website, her Instagram or her Facebook page.

David Caddy is a writer, critic, editor, and poetry mentor. He has published books of poetry, essays, and travel writing. He has edited the independent, international literary journal, Tears in the Fence since 1984. His most recent books include The Bunny Poems (Shearsman Books), So Here We Are: Essays on English Poetry (Shearsamn Books) and Cycling After Thomas And The English (Spout Hill Press, USA). His next book of poetry, Interiors and Other Poems, will be published by Shearsman Books in 2023. He was the co-author of London: City of Words (Blue Island) with Westrow Cooper, and has worked as a literary and editorial advisor for various organisations.

Debra Kelly is Professor Emerita in Modern Languages, School of Humanities, University of Westminster, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking, King’s College London. She has published widely in French and Francophone literary and cultural studies, including Pierre Albert-Birot. A Poetics in Movement, A Poetics of Movement (1997) and Autobiography and Independence. Selfhood and Creativity in North African Postcolonial Writing in French (2003). In 2005 she was made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Government in recognition of her services to French language, literature and culture. Her current research focuses on the historical and contemporary French and Francophone communities in London, and she is co-editor of A History of the French in London. Liberty, Equality, Opportunity (2013) and author of Fishes with Funny French Names. A History of the French Restaurant in London from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First century (2022).

Bridget Knapper works for the international movement Economy for the Common Good which seeks a society where the goal is a good life for all. She has an MA in French and Francophone Studies. Bridget speaks French and German and enjoys collaborating on a range of creative projects. 

Readings will begin promptly at 7pm, followed by mingling and a chance for book signing after 8pm.

We look forward to a wonderful evening of multilingual poetry!

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Morocco Bound Bookshop, 1a Morocco Street, London, United Kingdom