This was an intersection of visual art and poetry. Poetry in response to Ismail’s exhibition at Efie Gallery, Beyond the Fence Begins the Sky. 

The fusion of this poetry in text and audio serves as the artistic contextual expression of these figures in the art and speaks of how the art interprets itself before the poet. The concept of expressing one’s experiences is subject to an arrangement–a narrative rooted in modern society; so this interdisciplinary art wants listeners to be conscious of the little identity stereotypes they cannot see–and help us be understood in the unexpected times and trying moments.

The poems were created through the grotesqueness and penetrating gaze of merely human beings, experiencing, surviving, and wrestling with the same emotions, pain, happiness, sadness, and despair experienced worldwide. 

Beyond the Fence Begins the Sky by Isshaq Ismail.

Poetry: Land of hope and Favour

The beginning

Everyone was expecting you at the village square 

To call your clothed name from dreams–

And across roads of unknown fate

They never prepared to tell you 

before the season of your time 

How on this land of hope and favour

Life courageously ends at birth

And only begins from our infant tears  

They never tell you, on earth 

We slash hot pepper in old wounds

To teach our future scars how to embrace healing 

No one comes whispering  

Of mountains still to quell on high hills 

And rivers there many you have to ford  

Grotesque, but you are here 

And I was expecting you

if tears come and gather you through your eyes

I hope they teach you how to see 

That deserts too have blue rivers, maybe 

Not only through poems

but you are here 

And I was expecting you