Nigerian Writer Shines at New York’s Global Translation

Nigerians have been commended for their creative ingenuity at the just concluded Global Translation Night held in New York.

The event saw poets from across 10 countries in Africa, Europe Latin America, and the United States converged in New York to celebrate art and poetry. 

At the event, US-based Nigerian writer and professor of poetry, Gbenga Adesina came on the spotlight, following his delivery that attracted a prolonged ovation.

According to the organisers, the Global Translation Night is an effort to break language boundaries through poetry by having a bilingual celebration and festival of words in both English and Spanish.

Adesina’s performance which became a highlight of the two-day bilingual event also earned him more recognition at the global stage. 

Commenting, he said, “I live inside the dream of language. Since I was a child, I have had an affinity for human languages and stories across different cultures, countries, and nationalities. We just need to listen. We are surrounded by stories.”

An award-winning poet and essayist, Adesina is the first Nigerian to win the Brunel International Poetry Prize. He is a recipient of scholarships and fellow of Norman Mailer Center, the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, New York University. 

In his remark, Editor of the Narrative Magazine and convener of the annual Narrative Prize, Carol Edgarian said, “Adesina’s works honors and humanises the personal and historical grief of immigrant families, the joys and complexities of familial love, and the abiding belief that poetry can carry us across the water.

 The magic of Adesina’s poetry is that he twines painful truths with abundant gifts of clarity, empathy, and, yes, love.”