Etymological Gossip

By Uljana Wolf

A collection of experimental essays exploring poetry, translation, and translingual imaginaries.

What if we thought of translation as a visit to a bounce house where languages jump together, trading sound and gesture, whispering their "etymological gossip" into our poems, dreams and dictionaries? In these essays (lectures, charts, cartographies) from the German poet and translator Uljana Wolf, translation comes from a translingual imagination, one that takes as its subject the "illegitimate kinships" found in language and its fractures. What comes forth is a call for our collective entanglement amidst the resurgence of monolingual, border-obsessed ideologies, at once rigorously playful and playfully rigorous.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1643623125
• ISBN13: 9781643623122
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Nightboat Books
• Length: 244 Pages