on poetry

“We are all students and explorers.”
John Burgess
(b. April 17, 1958)

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quote

Hot Off the Press

Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery (Seattle) promises comics, art, poetry, prose, music, and more by over 50 indie artists from the Northwest and beyond at the 8th annual Hot Off the Press Book Fair on Saturday, July 9, 2022. It’s free. Details on the Fantagraphics Events page and on Facebook.

funny, or not

Now and then we like to shine a light on the intersection of poetry and comics. Here are a few more places to explore:

• The Sequential Artists Workshop is a non-profit grassroots comics school and creative community that teaches people how to tell stories and make comics. In addition to many other offerings, they host a free Friday Night Comics Workshop on Zoom. Here’s a sample: Poetry Comics with Bianca Stone.
• Ink Brick was a poetry comics press and journal. Alas, they’ve stopped publishing, but you can visit the Ink Brick store to view samples (and buy) past issues, plus, the Contributors page provides links where you can dive into the past and current work of poetry-comics makers.
• Ley Lines is a quarterly publication dedicated to exploring the intersection of comics and the various fields of art and culture. Again, visit the store to view samples and purchase copies.
• Iterant Mag is an online poetry magazine that publishes new poetry and artwork. Run by the team at the Ruth Stone House, in Goshen, Vermont, Iterant featured poetry comics in Issue 5, which you can view online.

There are plenty more places to view poetry comics, including Seattle’s own Fantagraphics (online and in person), but this selection should get you well down the rabbit hole.

light reading

For a change of pace, have a look at Comic Book Resources, where Theo Kogod recommends “5 DC Comics To Read If You Love Poetry (& 5 Indie Comics Just As Good).”

More poetry comics here.

comics, seriously

Neil Cohn thinks seriously about comics. With a Ph.D. in Psychology from Tufts University and post-doc work at U.C. San Diego, he is currently an Associate Professor at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands. His work explores the “similarities between the underlying structure of language and the structure found in the ‘visual language’ used in comics.”

Not surprisingly, those similarities extend to visual poetry.

If you’re interested in visual language, have a look at Cohn’s Visual Language Lab and his latest book, Who Understands Comics?: Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension (Bloomsbury 2020).

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image by Neil Cohn

not ha ha funny

Now and then we post about the intersection between poetry and comics. One of the people working at that crossroads is Alexander Rothman. Here’s his essay, “What Is Comics Poetry?” Rothman’s website, Versequential, has a lot of examples of his work with a minimum of explanation.

If you’re particularly interested in the poetry/comics paradigm, you may enjoy “Joe Brainard’s Grid, or, the Matter of Comics” by Daniel Worden.

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image: words by Charles Olson, drawing by Alexander Rothman

vispo, vismemoir, visfiction, etc.

Trinidad Escobar is a storyteller, poet, visual artist, and full-time cartoonist from Milpitas, California. She combines her comics/illustrations with poetry, memoir, essays, fiction, and more. See lots of examples on her website and unlock more on Patreon.

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image: Self-Portrait

Line Readings

If you’re interested in the intersection of poetry and comics, you may want to have a look at the Line Readings column by Ivan Brunetti in The Paris Review. The column “begins with a close read of a single comics unit — a panel, a page, or a spread — and expands outward to encompass the history of comics, and the world as a whole.”

While you’re browsing at The Paris Review, be sure to visit the Poetry Rx archives to see the perfect poems to heal readers’ emotional challenges as prescribed by resident poets Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz.

comic relief

In case you’re in need of some comic relief, Tom Gauld may be able to help. His comics, which often refer to literature or the writing life, may be familiar from The New Yorker, The Guardian, or New Scientist, but you can also find them on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Laugh a little. It’s good for you.

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image

Valentine

Grant Snider draws comics about writing, literature, inspiration, art, books and other elements of the human condition.

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Cycles of Love by Grant Snider