{"id":104227,"date":"2018-01-01T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=104227"},"modified":"2017-12-29T17:52:21","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T17:52:21","slug":"effigies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/effigies\/","title":{"rendered":"Effigies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Effigies<\/a>, by Lawand and Pascale Petit (ISBN 978-9950-313-46-0)<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>A collection of drawings by Syrian artist Lawand, accompanied by poems which were composed by the British poet Pascale Petit in response to these images.<\/p>\n

This book was commissioned by The Mosaic Rooms<\/a>, an art foundation in London, which exhibits works from the Middle-East. Lawand\u2019s drawings are heart-breaking: his pencil sets off a flame, and figures are born out of it. His sketches hit unformed emotions and unspoken experiences in the reader. As I write this review, I cannot help but notice how much I myself feel drawn towards writing poems in response to his drawings one day; but I will limit this review to Petit\u2019s poems, which transport Lawand\u2019s drawings into the verbal realm.<\/p>\n

Although, even the verbal realm into which Petit\u2019s poems take us has the language of some other world; such is the appeal of her words. Mature, motherly, wounded and child-like: these are some of the feelings which flow out of Petit\u2019s pen as she observes the intensity in Lawand\u2019s moving pencil. Her poems give these images a life and a story of their own. In Girl in Flight<\/em>, a little girl flies up above the skies with godly powers,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girl up in the air \/ has given up on gravity… \/ She can reach the light of another world \/ if this one won\u2019t help her.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The pain, the wounds of a child in this poem are given expression and then liberated beyond the stars.<\/p>\n

At times there is also a sense of confinement, an imprisonment of pain in the body as Petit writes in Crush Cage, <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the feral hours \/ when the bars of my ribs tighten, \/ the walls of this room \/ become a crush cage.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em>It is only the mature and experienced poet who can achieve a balance between darkness and light, between pain and wisdom. This is what Petit achieves in her poems as one turns the pages. In Veil<\/em>, a boy\u2019s body covered in a blackened shell hands out some meaning, as she writes<\/p>\n

\u201cand if I rough in a black veil \/ over the face \/ it\u2019s so that you, viewer, \/ will not be blinded.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lawand\u2019s images also invoke in Petit the theme of family and violence. In The Double<\/em>, she writes<\/p>\n

\u201cEven as he slips the knife in \/ he tells me he is my brother.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lastly, her poems look at the tension between the self and society, between one\u2019s own troubles and the responsibilities in family, as she writes in A Woman\u2019s Face<\/em>,<\/p>\n

\u201cThis mother, at her dressing table, trying to decide \/ which face to wear, asking advice from shadows…\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We hold in our own shadow, aspects of ourselves which we cannot tolerate, and aspects of ourselves, which we are told by the society and family as being unacceptable. From one perspective, the poems in this book are a dialogue with the shadow, but from another, they are a quest in finding meaning. Both Lawand and Petit lay bare human suffering, in a gentle, manageable and respectful way. In poetry these themes are often the hardest to achieve, but this balance is what Lawand and Petit collectively create.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sumeet Grover is the founder of <\/em>Global Poetry<\/strong><\/a>, dedicated to creativity, human dignity, dialogue and global citizenship. He is a winner of the Portico Brotherton Open Poetry Prize 2014 and was shortlisted for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in 2014 & 2015. He has authored two books of poetry: <\/em>House Arrest & Disobedience (2015<\/em>) and <\/em>Change (2011<\/em>). Grover is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environmen<\/strong><\/a>t<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Effigies is a collection of drawings by Syrian artist Lawand, accompanied by poems which were composed by the British poet Pascale Petit in response to these images. Even the verbal realm into which Petit\u2019s poems take us has the language of some other world; such is the appeal of her words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}