This book has collaboration and translation at its heart: between people, words and images, languages, cultures. The poems came first, in Polish. Then came the photographic response to them. Then four translators, MARTA DZIUROSZ, MARIA JASTRZEBSKA, DANUSIA STOK and ELZBIETA WOJCIK-LEESE, took a set of 12 or 13 poems each and translated them into English. All people involved were women: the poet, the photographer, the four translators and the two editors. Together they arrived at 51 Polish poems, 51 English poems and 51 photographs making this collection. They raise themes such as cultural identity and migration, queerness, racism, isolation and family memories.

In a landscape scarred by conflict, two women begin a quest for a lost child and a lost world of peace. Bound together by love and acceptance, their story and path interweave with fellow outcasts - people like the ever-suave Dame Blanche, Sister Asunta, martial artist and magician, Master Wu Wu, and the lost soul, Tulip - but whether peace is simply the end of war or something deeper is something they must discover for themselves. A haunting tale, told in a series of visionary prose poems, The True Story of Cowboy Hat & Ingenue interweaves memory and yearning to ask questions that reflect on our past and, disturbingly, on our futures.