Poet and translator Meena Kandasamy interrogates the power dynamics inherent in the act of translation, exploring it as a crucial form of decolonial, feminist and anti-caste praxis. She draws from her wide-ranging experience, discussing the challenges of translating the classical love poetry of Thiruvalluvar, the fiery polemics of Thanthai Periyar, and the revolutionary force of militant Dalit poetry and speeches.

Described by the Independent as a ‘one-woman, agit-prop literary-political movement’, Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, translator, anti-caste activist and academic based in India.

Over twenty years, her writing has addressed state and structural violence and people's militant resistance against caste, gender and ethnic oppressions. Her extensive corpus includes three poetry collections, Touch (2006), Ms Militancy (2010) and Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You (2023), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), the Women's Prize short-listed When I Hit You (2017) and Exquisite Cadavers (2019).

In 2022, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was also awarded the PEN Hermann Kesten Prize for her writing and work as a ‘fearless fighter for democracy, human rights and the free word.’

She holds a PhD in sociolinguistics and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.