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A review by zarvindale
Tropicalia by Frances Cannon, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
4.0
This collaboration carries the earlier versions of the poems that would later make up Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta’s third poetry collection Hush Harbor. Some of the poems lose their line cuts here and turn into prose poems. One of them doesn’t yet have its official title while another seems to be an exclusive to this book.
I have loved Hush Harbor, so I obviously extend that love to this collaboration. What makes me look forward to this is Frances Cannon’s attempts at translating Mookie’s poems into illustrations and new lyrical verses. To my surprise, Frances was able to keep up! She managed to not only translate but also interpret: she borrows some of the lines from Mookie’s poems, inserts her own knowledge in between, and creates simpler, if not simplified, iterations, majority of which are infused with narrative.
Frances’s illustrations, meanwhile, are just as profound as the poems and translations. Sometimes it feels like the illustrations accompany Frances’s verses more than Mookie’s.
At this point I have come to demand more collaborations of the sort from poets and illustrators. Both individuals go hand in hand as each tries to concretize abstract ideas in order to come up with fresh outputs.
I have loved Hush Harbor, so I obviously extend that love to this collaboration. What makes me look forward to this is Frances Cannon’s attempts at translating Mookie’s poems into illustrations and new lyrical verses. To my surprise, Frances was able to keep up! She managed to not only translate but also interpret: she borrows some of the lines from Mookie’s poems, inserts her own knowledge in between, and creates simpler, if not simplified, iterations, majority of which are infused with narrative.
Frances’s illustrations, meanwhile, are just as profound as the poems and translations. Sometimes it feels like the illustrations accompany Frances’s verses more than Mookie’s.
At this point I have come to demand more collaborations of the sort from poets and illustrators. Both individuals go hand in hand as each tries to concretize abstract ideas in order to come up with fresh outputs.