Doruntina Vinca: Kosovo Fugue in Seven Parts - A collective reading of June Jordan in Albanian

Kosovo Fugue in Seven Parts is a collective reading performance led by Doruntina Vinca, where visitors engage with the poetry of American poet and activist June Jordan in Albanian for the first time. Jordan wrote these poems in April 1999, as the war in Kosovo was unfolding, during which 800,000 Kosovo Albanians were forcibly displaced. Many sought refuge in Albania, with Durrës becoming a key site of shelter for thousands.

Printed and distributed among the audience, the poems come to life in a shared moment of performative reading and collective expression. Following the reading, Vinca and Arnisa Zeqo introduce Jordan’s work, highlighting her significance as a feminist and political writer while drawing connections to Kosovo’s history. The event extends beyond the performance, as Radio Al-Hara transmits the reading live and Bar Tore later plays recordings of Jordan reading her own poetry, and attendees take home limited-edition prints as ephemera of a newly formed collective memory.

Doruntina Vinca

Doruntina Vinca is a writer, researcher and translator based in Tirana, Albania. Her work practice dwells on an intersection of language, feminist thinking and text as a tool for practicing new forms of collectivity and sharing of knowledge. She is the cofounder and co-editor of Radical Sense, a feminist reading group that convenes weekly in Tirana as of 2018, and virtually as of 2020. She has edited two volumes of feminist and literary texts, translated from English into Albanian by the Radical Sense collective, and published by 28 November (2020 and 2023). She is currently writing her first novel, exploring themes of memory and storytelling centered on silenced voices, human and non-human alike.