Boatman

This book ‘Boatman! Take these songs from me’ incarnates a unique encounter: of languages, cultures, and modes of creativity. ‘Painted reliefs’ by artist Masood Hussain dialogue with several poems by Gabriel Rosenstock, with the images and their corresponding texts on facing pages. Even as the artwork is a product of collaged and textured layers, the poems are similarly layered, being Japanese tanka written in the Irish language with accompanying English translations. Of course, being the creative expression of a Kashmiri artist and an Irish poet, they also bring to the surface the political conflict in their respective homelands, deeply experienced on the body and buried in the psyche.