Lorna Goodison & Fawzia Muradali Kane: Dante’s Inferno

Leading Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison was at the shop to discuss her translation of Dante’s Inferno (Carcanet). As much a transformation as a translation, Goodison’s reworking casts the great Jamaican folklorist and poet Louise ‘Miss Lou’ Bennett-Coverley as Virgil, and moves the action to the Caribbean, where we encounter other poets, including Goodison’s friend Derek Walcott, local politicians, reggae pioneers and other figures from the island’s past, at the same time endowing Jamaican patois with a startling beauty and power.

Goodison was in conversation with poet and architect Fawzia Muradali Kane.