THIS KNOT – A NEW VERSION OF DANTE’S COMMEDIA WITH THE POET

I am creating a new version of Dante’s (1265-1321) Commedia that is at once highly personal and ‘universal’ in Dante’s visionary sense of ‘la forma universal di questo nodo / the universal shape of this knot’. Proceeding from my own subjectivity, the threads of this nexus radiate from Elkhart, Indiana, traditional  lands of the Myaamia (Miami) and Bodéwadmi (Potawatomi) people, to Volturara Appula and Castellana Grotte (Italy) and beyond, wrapped up in my experience of young onset Parkinson’s disease, which I’ve previously written about in Granta.

I approach my version of Dante with procedures, rituals, maps, and other voices, in and out of time. The archive is vast, and it is made of skins of long-dead animals and trees and traces of hands copying, commenting, annotating, redacting, falsifying, digitising.

Just as a fifteenth century folio of the Commedia is described in the British Library catalogue, I begin imperfectly, and I am wanting the desired (not side) effect of translation – or is it my Parkinson’s medication – in the face of degeneration.

The pain lifts when I carry Dante’s words over, a knot with many threads, still attached to the loom.



PUBLICATIONS

‘Circling Dante’, in Firmament, Sublunary Editions magazine, summer 2024

Canto I Inferno with accompanying essay ‘Three Beginnings: Versioning Dante’s Commedia’, Poetry Ireland Review, issue 144 winter 2024

Inferno 3, Purgatorio 1, Purgatorio 3, Notre Dame Review, forthcoming Fall 2025

2 limited edition (of 40) DIY Pamphlets – Purgatorio 2 (with translation by Nicoletta Asciuto) and Purgatorio 6 (with cover painting by Philip Heubeck).

PERFORMANCES/LECTURES/PRESENTATIONS

Reading/paper presentation, ‘‘They Said Grave Words about My Future Life’: Translating Dante’s Commedia in ‘Crip Time’’, American Association of Italian Studies Conference, Instituto Sant’Ana, Sorrento, May 2024

Performance of Inferno Canto 1 with the Poet K for Xing the Line series curated by Jeff Hilson and Iris Colomb, Hoxton Cabin, London, July 20 2024

Performance-lecture, ‘“Beginning imperfectly…wanting”: Versioning Dante’s Commedia’, Dante’s Global Female Publics, University of Warwick, Sept 2024

‘Seeing through Reading: The Poet K Versions Dante’s Commedia for the Poetics Research Group’, chaired by Beatrice Carnelutti, CUNY Graduate Centre, Oct 2024

Performance-lecture, ‘Questo nodo / credo ch’i vidi: Alessandro Geraldini | Volturara Appula | Elkhart, Indiana’, Convegno Internazionale Alessandro Geraldini, l’Umanesimo, il Nuovo Mondo, il problema dell’ ”Altro”, Amelia (TR) & Centro Europeo di Toscolano, Nov 2024

Circling Translation, a reading and Q & A with Nicoletta Asciuto for Writers at York, Nov 2024

Performance, Poetry Ireland Review Launch, University of Notre Dame Dublin Global Gateway, Jan 2025

Lecture-performance, ‘Descending into Detail: Meanwhile in Dante’s Commedia with the Poet K’, University College Cork Centre for Dante Studies Public Lecture Series, Feb 2025

Seminar, Approaches to Translation and Versioning with Nicoletta Asciuto and Kimberly Campanello, University of Rochester, March 26

Lecture-performance, ‘A floating thing, a seed with wings: A performance from This Knot: A new version of Dante’s Commedia with the Poet K’, Florida Gulf Coast University, Feb 2025

Susan Stanford Friedman Memorial Keynote performance-lecture, EUTERPE [European Literatures from and Gender from a Transnational Perspective] SUMMIT, University of York, May 2025

Performance, Doing Dante Differently, Ledbury Poetry Festival (with Phil Terry), June 2025 

For bookings use the contact below.


SUPPORT FROM

  • William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies, University of Notre Dame

  • Society of Authors Strachey Trust Grant to examine the Gladstone Library materials on Dante

  • International Mobility Fund, University of Leeds (returning to the University of Notre Dame and institutions in New York and New Jersey)

  • Awarded full year of sabbatical for academic year 2024-25

  • Practice Research Diaries project (Centre for Practice Research in the Arts and the Brotherton Libraries)