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Lorna Goodison: Dante's Inferno, A New Translation

3 Sep 2025

The Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland is delighted to announce a very special poetry event at UCC. The internationally acclaimed Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison is coming to UCC for the book launch of her magnificent Dante’s Inferno: A New Translation (Carcanet, 2025).

Date/time/venue: Thursday 4 September, 18.00, Council Room, UCC.

Admission free, but tickets essential on Eventbrite here: 

Please join us on the Irish leg of celebrated Jamaican poet s UK & Ireland tour, where she will read from her new translation, .

This Jamaican Dante, a quarter-century in the making, is as much transformation as it is translation. Goodison draws on the entire continuum of Jamaican speech yet securely grounds the action in Dante’s formal architecture, bringing an entire world to life. Here, she recreates the journey through the ‘unpaved and rocky road’ of Dante’s Hell for a contemporary audience and attempts to do for Caribbean vernacular what Dante did for his Italian language in the fourteenth century – endow it with an entirely new vocal music and power.

The event will include a reading by Lorna Goodison, Daragh O’Connell presenting the new work, and Lorna in conversation with Lee Jenkins.

The event is free to attend and open to all but space is limited – .

This event is hosted by The Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland (CDSI), ArtFictions, The Department of Italian (UCC), The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, UCC and The School of English, with Carcanet Press.

Copies of the book will be available to buy at the event.