Jamael Westman, star of Hamilton, ‘Paper Boats’.
The brilliant young actor and award-winning star of Hamilton in London’s West End and Los Angeles, Jamael Westman performs this iconic work, the much loved poem, ‘Paper Boats’ by Tagore.
This 1 minute short was filmed during the lockdown summer of 2020 in Wiltshire, England for the launch of Allie Esiri’s new anthology, A Poem for Every Autumn Day. Directed by Paul Weiland.
Other poems recorded that day are read by Jamael, Helena Bonham Carter and Tobias Menzies.
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Allie’s anthologies contain poems for every day of the year, each one with an introduction. Here is how this poem appears in the books:
The Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, and was a noted artist and musician as well as a poet. This poem is about quietly attempting to make contact with the universe outside of yourself. The paper boats themselves act like Tagore’s poems – he does not know where they will travel, nor what they will mean to his readers, but in his dreams they take on a life of their own.
Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the
running stream.
In big black letters I write my name on them and the
name of the village where I live.
I hope that someone in some strange land will find them
and know who I am.
I load my little boats with shiuli flowers from our
garden, and hope that these blooms of the dawn will
be carried safely to land in the night.
I launch my paper boats and look into the sky and see
the little clouds setting their white bulging sails.
I know not what playmate of mine in the sky sends
them down the air to race with my boats!
When night comes I bury my face in my arms and
dream that my paper boats float on and on under the
midnight stars.
The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and the lading is
their baskets full of dreams.
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