Languages of Resistance: Indigenous Poetics Workshop Series with Juana Adcock
We’re thrilled to announce a series of four creative, exploratory online writing and translation workshops led and curated by Wasafiri’s Translator in Residence (Endangered Languages), Juana Adcock.
While designing these workshops, Juana was inspired by the works of poets Hubert Matiúwàa (writing in the Mè’phàà language) and Fernanda Kookuilo'o (writing in the Tu'un Savi language), both of whom are from the mountain region of Guerrero, Mexico. Building on short, pre-recorded audio and video of the authors reading their work, as well as translated reading material, participants will explore some of the issues at stake when bringing works from Indigenous languages into English — and how Indigenous authors can transform our relationships to language and writing.
Workshop 1 — Translating the Untranslatable: Can a Poem Be a Tree?
What does it mean to translate minoritised languages that have a radically different worldview to our own? In this workshop, participants will discuss the concept of cyclical time in Mesoamerican cultures through two examples: the myth of the inchworm in Mè’phàà culture and the concept of blossoming time in Tu'un Savi culture. Then, participants will translate a short poem by Fernanda Kookuilo'o, and tackle ‘untranslatable’ concepts, thinking about how we can creatively use the layout on the page: can a poem be a tree, and have branches and roots, as well as footnotes?
When: Tuesday, 14 July, 7 - 9pm BST (rescheduled from postponed workshop originally on 30 June)
Where: Online
Tickets: £35 (Concessions available), £95 (Workshop pass to attend all the first three workshops)
Workshop 2 — The Music of Poetry: Translating a Tonal Language
In this playful, creative session, participants will explore the role of image and sound in translation. Through a series of writing prompts, and utilising a range of translation strategies, participants will create visual and sound-based interventions. On the one hand, we will draw inspiration from an image from a fourteenth-century Tu’un Savi manuscript, and on the other, from Hubert Matiúwàa's poem ‘Mbaxta’ (‘The Rooster’). By looking at the role of poetry in the ancient Mesoamerican world, and how tonal languages articulate meaning, we will together refresh and reimagine our relationships to the written word.
When: Tuesday, 28 July, 7-9pm BST
Where: Online
Tickets: £35 (Concessions available), £95 (Workshop pass to attend all the first three workshops)
Workshop 3 — The Poetics of Extraction: The Poetics of Healing
In this session, participants will read a short extract of Hubert Matiúwàa's philosophical work, Xó Nune Juma Xabo Mè’phàà, in English translation. In this, the author discusses how the word ‘xta’ in Mè’phàà means both ‘skin’ and ‘to be’ or ‘to carry’, revealing a worldview in which humans are an intrinsic part of the skin of the land. Participants will further compare words in Mè’phàà and in Scots, juxtaposing them with words used in mining terminology. Through a series of reflective creative exercises, participants will explore the political implications of languages designed to obscure power relations — and consider the poetic power of words that heal.
When: Tuesday, 25 August, 7 - 9pm BST
Where: Online
Tickets: £35 (Concessions available), £95 (Workshop pass to attend all the first three workshops)
BOOK TICKETS FOR WORKSHOPS 1-3
Workshop 4 — Speculative Ethnolinguistics: Dismantling and Reconfiguring English
The English language bears the marks of extractivism. Even when we talk about our social relationships, finance-related metaphors often pervade our speaking and, by extension, the ways we connect with one another. We may speak of people being ‘in business’, ‘left on the shelf’, or ‘past their sell-by date’, without stopping to think of the implications. Through a series of playful writing exercises inspired by Fernanda Kookuilo'o and Tu'un Savi grammar – which is a gender-neutral language with different pronouns, depending on whether things are round, wooden, or liquid – participants will make up their own idioms, pronouns, grammar rules, and neologisms of care — where language itself becomes a tool for critical fabulation.
When: Wednesday, 23 September, 6 - 8pm BST
Where: Online
Tickets: This workshop is part of English PEN's month-long International Translation Day programme in September 2026. Tickets for this workshop will be available from late July.
Notes
These workshops are recommended for translators at any stage of their career, including students, first-time translators, and unpublished translators. Our workshops are not language specific; participants can be working from any language into English.
Five free spaces per workshop will be offered to participants from an Indigenous background — please get in touch via wasafiri@qmul.ac.uk if this is you, specifying which workshop(s) you would like to attend. Free places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
This project is supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.
Juana Adcock is a poet, translator, and editor. Her poetry collection I Sugar the Bones (Out-Spoken Press, 2024) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and for The Saltires, Scotland's National Book Awards. She is co-editor of the anthology Temporary Archives: Poetry by Women of Latin America (Arc, 2022) and has judged the Premio Valle Inclán prize for translation from Spanish. Her translation of Laura Wittner’s Translation of the Route (Bloodaxe/PTC, 2024) was longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and received a PEN Translates award, as did her translations of the Me'phàà language poet, Hubert Matiúwàa. In Mexico, she has published in Spanish her poetry collections Manca (Tierra Adentro, 2014), Dolly Parton y la traducción imposible (UANL, 2025), and Barraca del bisonte (UNAM, 2025), and she has performed her poetry at over fifty literary festivals across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. She is currently completing a CHASE-funded PhD in Translation Studies at the University of East Anglia, focusing on poetry in Indigenous languages of Mexico.
Image: Panoramic view of the Mezcala Bridge on Highway 95D in Mexico