{"product_id":"my-mothers-scribe-poems-and-tales-9789382579762","title":"My Mother's Scribe: Poems and Tales","description":"\u003cp\u003eRafiq Kathwari is a dangerous man. A poet of family history, of geopolitics, he breaks down walls and leaves glittering shards whose beauties make you weep for what is and what could be. This is poetry that expects tears and earns them. From a mother's heart-wrenching madness to a nation's lost paradise, the words confront change without flinching. Experience the alchemy by which art draws solace from suffering, resolution from desolation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- Gerald Jonas, \u003cem\u003epoet, longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, book reviewer and art critic for The New York Times.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere is a threading together of loss: The Kashmir that Rafiq Kathwari spins together, held by poetic legacy so as to stop the essence of Kashmir from slipping through, is not a place but a prayer. Each line of \u003cem\u003eMy Mother's Scribe\u003c\/em\u003e draws on poetry's miraculous capacity to reveal what the head finds so hard to hear from the heart.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- Justine Hardy, \u003cem\u003eFounder, Healing Minds Foundation which supports Kashmiris who are mentally scarred by the violence and conflict.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the heart of these poems, there remains an absent center, celebrated in song, wept over in exile: Kashmir, a homeland reduced to a battleground, its people subjected to endemic violence. A profound sadness inhabits these poems, yet so too do a continuity of affection, a lineage of hope. I leave you with the word Mouje: Mother, mother country.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- Ranjit Hoskote, \u003cem\u003ecurator who translated \u003c\/em\u003eI, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded\u003cem\u003e (2011).\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMy Mother's Scribe\u003c\/em\u003e gut-punched me. The poems are sensorial. You step into them, watching events unfold. The writing is crisp and delectable; Rafiq's own wit shines through to help navigate the painful burden of the maternal legacy that resides at the heart of these poems. Rafiq captures his mother's worldly vanities, endearing her to the reader. The apple does not fall far from the tree-this is a Kashmiri apple at that.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- Ather Zia, \u003cem\u003eauthor of \u003c\/em\u003eResisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir\u003cem\u003e (2019).\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMy Mother's Scribe\u003c\/em\u003e is not some mealy-mouthed requiem for a departed materfamilias but a madcap homage to someone with imagined links to the makers and shakers of her era. Kathwari does for poetry what Marquez, Kharms and Vonnegut did for prose. He lifts his readers into the extraordinary, with his own precious brand of humour and grace.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- Gabriel Rosenstock, Irish poet and thaumaturgist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKathwari, Rafiq:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Rafiq Kathwari, the first Kashmiri recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Award, obtained an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University and an MA in Political and Social Science from the New School University. Rafiq divides his time between New York City, Dublin and Kashmir.","brand":"Yoda Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50379906023698,"sku":"9789382579762","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_7b904138-6967-4a7e-8e6d-de2acce3576d.jpg?v=1728670612","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/my-mothers-scribe-poems-and-tales-9789382579762","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}