Working On Gallery Vol. 7 - No.6
Part 2
Guest Poet: John Burgess (J.B.)
Curator: Naoko Fujimoto
Part 2
Guest Poet: John Burgess (J.B.)
Curator: Naoko Fujimoto
Contemporary Haibun Online - John Burgess
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John Burgess (J.B.) grew up in upstate New York, worked on a survey crew in Montana, and taught English in Japan He’s now retired and writes and draws in Seattle. His influences include ’70s punk, Montana bars, and Japanese haiku. He has six books of poetry from Ravenna Press, each interwoven with an increasing number of maps, graphs, and comics. He’s been writing haiku for over 40 years. For the past 10 years he’s been creating poetry comics and haiku comics, and since 2022 he’s been researching “A History of Poetry Comics.” See more at punkpoet.net/blog. WEAVE is a theme for the Working On Gallery Vol.7. For this volume, I am focusing on writers and artists who weave elements into their creative community. Those elements could be family relationships, neighborhood activities, or academic interpretations. Either way, one thread tightens and makes us stronger like a universal cloth. |
A History of Poetry Comics
Blog Posts by John Burgess
October 2022 ~ Current
October 2022 ~ Current
No. 1 Blake’s Illuminations Started It All for Me
Poetry and drawing together is a matter of providing the reader/viewer with context to build a shared, deeper meaning with the poet/artist. That’s why Blake’s *illuminated* is a great descriptor. For me, the best poetry comics illuminate — words and drawing together that create something new.
No. 2 Poet Kenneth Patchen’s Picture Poems Inspired by Blake’s Illuminations
Poetry comics are different than captioned illustrations or ekphrastic poems, which rely on someone else’s drawings for explanation/inspiration.
No. 3 Japanese Haiga Still Informs Us Today
What attracts me the most: The upper left [haiga] third is blank, strategically balancing the haiku and the self-portrait. It gives space for contemplation for both the artist and the viewer, and space for the meaning to (literally) dissipate.
No. 4 No Doubt – Bianca Stone Creates Poetry Comics
Did the artist intend their work to be poetry comics?
No. 5 Defining Poetry Comics – a First Attempt
Is it a poetry genre like concrete poetry or visual poetry? Or is it a comics genre akin to literary fiction? Let’s look at 4 ways we can perhaps corral poetry comics — even if we can’t pigeonhole them.
No. 6 Ink Brick was Watershed for Poetry Comics in the Twenty-Teens
To understand the expanse of the poetry comics universe, the online remains of INK BRICK (2013-2019)
No. 7 Poet Kenneth Koch Pushed Poetry Comics to New Possibilities
Published posthumously, The Art of the Possible – Comics Mainly Without Pictures (Soft Skull Press, 2004) is one of the books that inspired me to even try drawing poetry comics.
No. 8 Pop Art or Poetry Comics? of Joe Brainard
As Brainard makes us consider popular comics as rightful subjects and architecture for fine art, he equally makes us consider a wider acceptance of what a poem is.
No. 9 Book Review – Johnny Damm Brings Found Text to His Poetry Comics
Like the best poetry, Damm has created something entirely new working within preset constraints. (Think “The Sonnets” by Ted Berrigan.)
No. 10 Concrete Poetry – Honoring Our Forerunners
Many concrete poems are also sound poems, which mirrors the challenges of “performing” poetry comics.
No. 11 Book Review – DIY Poetry Comics from Susanne Reece
These are wild! There are frames coming out of pictures, frames inside frames, a network of frames, frames fanning and folding, frames ignoring gutters while creating their own runaway gutters, frames that are crossed out.
No. 14 Book Review – Illuminated Poems of Moni-Sauri
Throughout From the Shore, Alex Moni-Sauri’s drawings perfectly complement her handwritten poems adding illumination, punctuation, and thoughtful pauses.
No. 15 Porcellino on Connection between Poetry and Comics
No. 16 Kapow! Paired Poets with Cartoon Artists
No. 17 Book Reviews – Notley, Field Guide, Damm
No. 16 Kapow! Paired Poets with Cartoon Artists
No. 17 Book Reviews – Notley, Field Guide, Damm
Field Guide to Graphic Literature edited by Kelcey Ervick and Tom Hart (Rose Metal Press, 2023). Wow! A book for instructors, students, and writers who are looking to create “graphic narratives, poetry comics, and literary collage.” Each of the 28 essays/lessons is by a poet/writer/artist working in a specific aspect of combining pictures and words; each comes with an example of their work; and each comes with an exercise to guide your own creation. In total, these comprise a great survey of current state of affairs. I couldn’t put it down! My favorite aspect of the book is the “Alternate Table of Contents by Form,” which makes it easy to navigate to the form you want to explore, such as “Poetry Comics & Comics Poetry.”
No. 18 Musings on Words + Pictures by R.H. Blyth
Although Blyth is discussing painting and poetry in context in terms of Japanese haiga – brush paintings that illuminate a poem, often times a haiku (first discussed in AHOPC #03) – I think it’s relevant to poetry comics.
No. 19 The Haiku Comics of Matt Madden
Comics artist Matt Madden, known for his 99 Ways to Tell a Story (Penguin, 2005), has created haiku comics that capture the simplicity of both pictures and words.
No. 20 Book Reviews – Recent Collaborations
Collaborations between poets and artists have shown up in poetry comics since at least the early 1960s.
No. 21 First-Known, Published Haiku Comic!
Among the many genres of poetry, haiku (the short poem that originated in Japan) is well suited to comics.
No. 22 Here’s the First Use of Term ‘Poetry Comics’
[Dave Morice] drew comics that illustrated poems by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and others we elders know from high school English class.
It’s notable that concurrent with the rise in popularity and proliferation of comics in the years between about 1870 and 1920 poetry was becoming more experiemental.
There can’t be poetry comics before there were comics.
No. 27 Pattern Poetry: Words and Pictures Have Gone Together Since the Beginning
The story of pattern poetry is, in fact, not the story of a single development or of one simple form, but the story of an ongoing human wish to combine the visual and literary impulses, to tie together the experience of these two areas into an aesthetic whole.
No. 28 Poetry Comics’ Intersection with Vispo
No. 29 Naming Poetry Comics
Here are terms “A History of Poetry Comics” has uncovered that each point in their own way to the practice of incorporating words and pictures into art.
No. 30 A Map of Roots & Influences
