House to House: Articulating a Poetics of Translucence

Shamma Al Bastaki – poet, writer, interdisciplinary artist and NYUAD alumna – discusses her latest poetry collection, House to House. Drawing on memories spanning the 1940s to the 1980s, Shamma traces the infra-ordinary details of daily life along the Dubai Creek, bringing the voices, values, and stories of a generation into poetic form. Blending documentary poetics, archival research, and text-image practices, Shamma reflects on her processes of listening, translating, and transducing, as she transformed collective memory into poetry, drawing, and collage.