Rāwaho: the Completed Poems
By Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature | Posted:
David Howard's new book features Croat artist Katarina Ivanisin Kardum's painting ‘The Eye of the Grasshopper’ on the cover.
Recently an event was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, to mark David Howard’s collaboration with the Croat artist Katarina Ivanisin Kardum, whose painting ‘The Eye of the Grasshopper’ is on the cover of his forthcoming book Rāwaho: the Completed Poems (Cold Hub Press, 2022).
Discovering Katarina's work I was transported by the dense monumentality of her graphite Mountains (2019) series; there was Biokovo - the memorial home of the Dalmatian emigrants to New Zealand who are central to my poetic sequence Mate, kei te mōhio tāua, he reo kei tōku arero ('Mate, we both know a language is waiting inside my tongue'). Because her work feels like a homecoming, The Eye of a Grasshopper sits on the cover of my book Rāwaho: the Completed Poems (Lyttelton, Cold Hub Press, 2022). For me, the textural strength of her worked surface represents ancestral knowledge; the visible mountain honours those invisible ancestors who once looked upon it. It's like Katarina's marks are signed by Time itself, and our two countries are united when her lines meet mine.
David Howard, 30 January 2022
Cold Hub Press will release the book to the NZ
market in July.