Poems from the Edge of Extinction gathers together 50 poems in languages from around the world that have been identified as endangered, and offers a unique insight into the culture of these beautiful, vulnerable languages through the voices of their poets.
With one of the world’s 7000 languages disappearing every two weeks, and with them their poetic traditions, this anthology, with accompanying English translations and commentaries, aims to preserve and reclaim voices which will otherwise fall silent. It includes poems by both new and established poets, such as award-winning Joy Harjo in Native American Mvskoke (Creek) Nation, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn in Irish Gaelic, Nineb Lamassu in Assyrian, and Jackie Kay in Scots.
The Endangered Poetry Project was launched in 2017, a major project to collect poetry written in the world's dying languages.
The book will be introduced by Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the SOAS World Languages Institute and Head of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, and Dr Martin Orwin, Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic and member of the Centre for Translation Studies where he researches poetry translation.