Mothering Tongues: A Reading and Conversation on Contemporary African Poetry with Poet-Scholars Gabriel Bámgbóṣé (UCSD) and Tsitsi Jaji (Duke)

Tsitsi Jaji reads selections from her published and new poetry. As a Zimbabwean-born poet in the American academy, Jaji’s work addresses the lived experience of diaspora as she seeks to speak with and between cultures by exploring praise poetry, translation, and the ethics of listening. In honor of two recently departed teachers, Ama Ata Aidoo and Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo, Jaji will meditate upon a literary lineage of women who usher the idioms and imagery of African languages into contemporary poetic forms. The reading will be followed by a conversation with Gabriel Bámgbóṣé on the state of publishing and poetry communities both on the African continent and the diaspora.

Tsitsi Jaji is a poet-scholar and Helen S. Bevington Associate Professor of English and African & African American Studies at Duke University. Her poetry collections include Mother Tongues (Cave Canem/Northwestern Press Prize 2018), Beating the Graves, and Carnaval (a chapbook in the New Generation African Poets series). She is also the author of Africa in Stereo: Music, Modernism, and Pan-African Solidarity.

Gabriel Bámgbóṣé is a BSP Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of African and Comparative Literature at UCSD. He is the author of the poetry collection Something Happened After the Rain.

RSVP by Thursday, May 9th at bit.ly/poetrywithbsp

Tuesday, May 14, 2024 | 5:30PM-7:00PM (PST)

Public Engagement Building (PEB) 201

Refreshments will be available