Poems from the Edge of Extinction: The Beautiful New Treasury of Poetry in Endangered Languages, in Association with the National Poetry Library

Poems from the Edge of Extinction: The Beautiful New Treasury of Poetry in Endangered Languages, in Association with the National Poetry Library by Chris McCabe

One language is falling silent every two weeks. Half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today will be lost by the end of this century. With the loss of these languages, we also lose the unique poetic traditions of their speakers and writers.

Poems from the Edge of Extinction gathers together 50 poems in languages from around the world that have been identified as endangered; it is a celebration of our linguistic diversity and a reminder of our commonalities and the fundamental role verbal art plays in human life around the world. With poems by influential, award-winning poets such as US poet laureate Joy Harjo, Hawad, Valzhyna Mort, and Jackie Kay, this anthology offers a unique insight into both languages and poetry, taking the reader on an emotional, life-affirming journey into the culture of these beautiful languages.

Each poem appears in its original form, alongside an English translation, and is accompanied by a commentary about the language, the poet and the poem - in a vibrant celebration of life, diversity, language, and the enduring power of poetry.

This timely collection is passionately edited by widely published poet and UK National Poetry Librarian, Chris McCabe, who is also the founder of the Endangered Poetry Project, a major project launched by London's Southbank Centre to collect poetry in the world's disappearing languages, and introduced by Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme and the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS University of London, and Dr Martin Orwin, Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic, SOAS University of London.

Languages included in the book: Assyrian; Belarusian; Chimiini; Irish Gaelic; Maori; Navajo; Patua; Rotuman; Saami; Scottish Gaelic; Welsh; Yiddish; Zoque.

Poets included in the book: Joy Harjo; Hawad; Jackie Kay; Aurélia Lassaque; Nineb Lamassu; Gearóid Mac Lochlainn; Valzhyna Mort; Laura Tohe; Taniel Varoujan; Avrom Sutzkever.

Poems from the Edge of Extinction: The Beautiful New Treasury of Poetry in Endangered Languages - About the Author

Chris McCabe’s work crosses artforms and genres including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and visual art. He was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award in 2013 and his five collections of poetry include Speculatrix (2014) and The Triumph of Cancer (2018), which is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His first novel, Dedalus, which is a sequel to Ulysses, was published by Henningham Family Press in 2018 and was shortlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize. This was followed by his novel Mud, which is a version of the Orpheus myth set in a world of Mud under Hampstead Heath. His non-fiction work includes an ongoing series of books including In the Catacombs (2014) and Cenotaph South (2016) which document his search to discover a great forgotten poet in one of London's Magnificent Seven cemeteries. With Victoria Bean he is the co-editor of The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (2015) and he is the editor of the forthcoming Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages (2019). He is the Head Librarian at the National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre.