num_pages: 48
description: Born in a Second Language troubles the spectrum between silence (or the limitations of the mouth) and music. Language is an embodied practice especially present through our hands. Words specifically names are a means of conjuring a certain kind of existence and defining who one will become.Thus different languages unlock different worlds and the names speakers answer to open them up to different becomeings.Born in a Second Language is curious about the sonic imagistic and linear implications on the page of speaking multiple languages when political historical and cultural weights contend. Its compelled by disappearance and how translation is often a mode through which it occurs across borders  a way in which we obliterate often due to what is untranslatable and considered unwelcome as we come into new selves in order to survive new territory.Translation is not only a tool to understand language but also a process that alters identity as speakers move through space and time. In the work home is ones body gender a mother mother tongue Brenda Fassie etc. How home is defined impacts each speakers positionality and perspective; it allows for understanding the connection between the interior and exterior worlds of the speakers. While the use of past geographical homes and history is in some poems nostalgic and in homage the greater project aims to examine how these elements arent stagnant temporally but rather persist in and shape speakers presently.
language: English
title: Born in a Second Language
publisher: Button Poetry