**DEADLINE EXTENDED** Many Tongues, One Mouth – the Expansive Challenge Faced by Multilingual Poets @ NeMLA 2025

deadline for submissions: 
October 15, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Rachel Martin (NeMLA Session)
contact email: 

 Multilingual poets write at the intersection of language, identity, and cross-cultural communication. Not only does the work of multilingual poets naturally create a space for innovation, but it also often serves as a broader commentary on the interplay between language and power. Every multilingual poet combines, leverages, or silences pieces of their complex identities, negotiating deeply personal nuances as well as socially constructed codes. Multilingual poets may choose to employ self-translation or multiple languages within a single poem, they may write separate works in different languages, or they may confine their work to a single language. With funds of knowledge that reach beyond the monolingual, multilingual poets are in the unique position of leveraging their heightened awareness of language as well as their multiple means of expression. 

Many Tongues, One Mouth – the Expansive Challenge Faced by Multilingual Poets 

 

Submissions: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21342  EXTENDED DEADLINE --> Abstracts now due by October 15th  This session seeks to explore the choices made by multilingual poets as they reflect both personal experiences of multilingualism and multilingual societal contexts. Papers focusing on specific poets in any era and with any combination of language pairings are welcome.  The following questions will give us common ground for discussion, while we respect the specific in search of the generalizable: 

  • Many multilingual poets engage with themes of diaspora, migration, and the fluidity of cultural identity. How are these themes elaborated through language choices? 
  • How have poets expressed an inner tension between languages? Has the balance of languages changed in response to age, establishment within the field, or historical events?
  • What are the implications of multilingualism for the interpretation and translation of poetry?
  • How do multilingual poets contribute to and challenge existing literary norms? How have multilingual poets (re)evolutionized, revitalized, and reinvented the poetic landscape?

 We already have submissions from scholars working with a range of languages and would like to expand the conversation to include scholarship on poetry written by speakers of Indigenous languages of the Americas, Spanish, Yiddish, French, and other languages.  

  • NeMLA 2025 will be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 6-9. (in person only)