Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Juliane Okot Bitek.
Juliane Okot Bitek is a poet. Her 100 Days (University of Alberta Press, 2016) was nominated for several writing prizes including the 2017 BC Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Alberta Book Awards and the 2017 Canadian Authors Award for Poetry. It won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi (Wolsak and Wynn, 2022), was shortlisted for the 2023 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and is a finalist for the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and the 2023 Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes. Her most recent collection of poetry, Song & Dread (2023), is published by Talonbooks under the name Otoniya J. Okot Bitek. She is an assistant professor of Black Studies, joint appointed in English and Gender Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Juliane joins Pádraig to talk about language, exile, conflict, and what and how we remember. You can find a full transcript and discussion questions here.