I don't like poems... that's how it all started. I realised that I've been avoiding one of literature's most elegantly expressive tools. And it's certainly not poetry's fault. The thing is, since we were little students, poems were served to us like a cold dish that is supposed to be hot. No matter how delicious the dish, it has lost all the taste because it was served wrong. We were supposed to read and memorise poems without even understanding the beauty they hold. Instead of opening our imagination to a fantastic world, poems blocked us, or me atleast! After realising the sad truth, I decided on a project that could be a step towards helping the new generation appreciate poetry. I want to encourage the youth to read & savour poetry. I want to translate a single poem into all the languages in the world. And that in one universal language; illustration.I gathered 7 poems by 7 writers, created an illustration for each, and collected them in a book. Not literal nor a completely abstract design but a mix of the real and surreal, of what our minds automatically spot and what it generates on its own. Then I took some keywords from each poem and illustrated them in a very realistic manner, a spoon, a butterfly, a handset, etc... The role of these mundane elements is to create a familiar feel to each piece in order to lure in any unwilling reader. The rest is what my imagination allowed me to see in each of the 7 poems and which i wish to stimulate the minds of young readers with. Curiosity, it all boils down to stimulating the curiosity in each and every reader. I want the shapes I created to make them think and dream and wish to decipher the poems. I want everyone to translate my illustration into their own language. I used black, because it's the color of curiosity, it's a sea of the unknown. It doesn't impose an opinion on you and it allows you to give it any character you want. However random the composition may seem, it is not. Every curve and every stroke is meant to be. it's geometric yet organic. Organised yet chaotic. It is a story told by an uncensored human mind.
