Alisoun Sings

Alisoun Sings finds its starting-point with Chaucer's iconic, proto-feminist Wife of Bath. Her forceful voice leads the way across narratives of genders, and addresses the brutality of social conventions with caustic humor. This labyrinthine text navigates love and protest in landscapes impacted by global warming, systemic violence and solar eclipses. Bergvall continues her previous work creating texts that rest on transhistoric forms of English, beyond its dominance as a global lingua franca, and places her quest in the intersections and migrations of stories and languages.

Caroline Bergvall is a writer of French-Norwegian origins based in London. She works across artforms, media and languages; her projects alternate between books, audio pieces, collaborative performances and language installations. Her publications include Drift (recipient of the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry), Meddle English: New and Selected Texts (recently translated into the French: L’Anglais mêlé), and Fig as well as a DVD of earlier installations Ghost Pieces: five language-based installations (2010). Recent group shows/festivals: Fundacio Tapiès (Barcelona), Theatre du Grütli (Geneva), The Serpentine Gallery (London), MOMA (NY), DIA Arts Foundation (NY), and Tate Modern (London). Recently completed a performance version of Drift, which toured Europe in 2014-2105. She has been the director of the Performance Writing program at Dartington College of Arts (1995-2000), co-Chair of the MFA in Writing, Bard College (2005-2007), recent guest faculty at Naropa University, and the Judith E. Wilson Fellow in Poetry and Drama at the University of Cambridge (2012-2013). Caroline is currently a Visiting Professor in Medieval Studies at King’s College London.