The Inferno

Title: The Inferno
Author: Lorna Goodison
ISBN: 9781550656787
Publisher: Signal Editions
Published: 2025
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Edition: Translation
Number of Pages: 250
Section: Poetry | Women Authors
Publisher Description:

" Halfway tree. The journey of our life found me / there at midnight in a ramshackle state." So begins Lorna Goodison's astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, a poet she once described as " uncompromising as an old testament prophet, stern as a Rastafarian elder."

For the last two decades, Goodison has translated and reimagined Dante's cantos, setting the original poem into her native Jamaica and employing Jamaican expressions and sayings. In doing so, she has attempted 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. In recreating the journey through the " unpaved and rocky road" of Dante's Hell for a contemporary audience, Goodison has given us a dazzling and profound new narrative of spiritual yearning for our era.