Language Shift was an exhibition of work by artist Mary Kuper that responded to the National Poetry Library's collection of poems in European languages.

As languages die out at the rate of one every two weeks, the National Poetry Library launched its Endangered Poetry Project in 2018 with the aim of collecting poems in as many of these languages as possible.

For the Language Shift exhibition, Kuper created visual works which exist as equivalent worlds to the poems they respond to and collectively create a visual map. These new works responded to languages that feature on UNESCO's world map of endangered languages including Breton, Alsatian, Sardinian and Shetlandic.

Also on display were poetry films and poems in translation from the Talking Transformations project, curated by Ricarda Vidal and Manuela Perteghella. Talking Transformations focuses on the idea of 'home' and 'migration' and exists as a series of poems which have been translated across languages. These poems were also made into films to show part of the poems' journey through different parts of Europe: the UK, Romania, Poland, France and Spain. 

Language Shift took place from Thursday 26 July to Sunday 23 September 2018.