Return to Poetry

Since January 2017, I have been able to return to writing poetry on a more routine basis, which has been, for me, a joyous renunion with my art of choice.  After my daughter's birth in 2014, I found it difficult to devote as much time, particularly as I was concentrating so intently on graphic novel projects.  Although Max and I have no plans to curb our collaboration, I do intend to continue spending a significant amount of time writing poetry and getting back into the swing of journal submissions.  I've also begun participating in a local poetry Meetup group called Living Poetry (https://livingpoetry.net/), which has created opportunities for meeting, writing, and workshopping with fellow writers.  Collaboration and communion with practitioners of one's craft is, I find, so essential to my life as a writer.  I recently had the opportunity to participate in a very cool online poetry project called ERASE-TRANSFORM, which I heard about through one of the Living Poetry organizers, Bart Barker, who produces a lovely blog at https://bartbarker.wordpress.com/.  ERASE-TRANSFORM invited poets to create poems out of Donald Trump's presidential inauguration speech by removing words, thereby re-envisioning the message therein.  You can read my submission at http://www.erase-transform.ink/blog/2017/03/10/apology/.

Joyous Reunion

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've posted, but better late than never? My graphic novel-making partner, Max Dowdle, and I have self-published our first full-length graphic novel under our imprint, Artagem Graphic Library. The book is called An Unlikely Refugee: The Story of a Python Named George It is a speculative "autobiography" about the Burmese python, George, who lived in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCMNS) for over two decades after being rescued by a U.S. Army Special Forces operative from Vietnam during the early years of the Vietnam War. We decided to write the story from George's perspective, which gave me the opportunity to be pretty free with using poetic language in conveying the contents of the snake's consciousness. We ended up successfully collaborating with the NCMNS around our project and had opportunities to speak at the museum at one of the Thursday evening Science Cafe events last year as well as at their recent annual Reptile & Amphibian Day. The museum ended up purchasing all of the original artwork, including the cover painting, which is now all a part of their permanent collection. Some of it is currently on display on the uppermost floor of the NCMNS, adjacent to the butterfly conservatory. It has been an exciting venture, and we are hoping to be able to do some more events related to the book around the Triangle area in the near future. You can learn more about the project at http://www.artagem.com/?page_id=120 or buy the book at https://www.storenvy.com/products/18094337-an-unlikely-refugee-the-story-of-a-python-named-george.