Poetry Comics Panel at OPA!

This weekend I hopped a BoltBus to Portland to present at the Oregon Poetry Association conference alongside three incredible PNW-based artists: Colleen Louise Barry, Catherine Bresner, and Erica Trabold.

In preparing for the panel, I thought a lot about my experiences with text and image before discovering that the world of poetry comics existed, my “primer” experiences, as it were—working with Broadsided Press, taking an ekphrasis workshop with Keetje Kuipers, two very formative film as literature courses at Auburn University—as well as the notion of collaboration, which for me is at the core of the poetry comics process (even when I’m the only person working on one).

At the panel, I shared excerpts from my slowly expanding “In the Circus” project, as well as opening pages from my illustrated version of Adrienne Raphel’s Imogen and the Beginning of Color, which (have I told you this? I haven’t told you this!) IS DONE. Tweaks will be made, but as of last week, I have illustrated a 64-page BOOK! As in, I have actually FINISHED SOMETHING FOR ONCE (*major confetti*)

But that's beside the point. The point is that the panel was awesome, the audience was attentive, and I'm super grateful.

After our panel, we walked outside to find this cucumber in the parking lot. “Smash the patriarchy,” Colleen titled it, and with that, we headed off for mimosas.