Illustration for poetry and letterpress…
The book! On a table! I never lose the thrill of seeing something I’ve done in print.
Family Matters is the third volume in a poetry collaboration between the writers’ collective Dark Angels and Paekakariki Press, a letterpress printing workshop in London.
This new anthology brings together work by eighteen writers associated with Dark Angels; Galen O’Hanlon is the featured poet. The collection takes ‘family’ as its central theme, in a diverse range of styles, techniques and voices.
Before I did anything visual, I asked to read the poems. Delving into the subject matter is one of the great privileges of my work. Words are part of my ideas process so reading was a natural first step. Therein lay the discovery that each poem was wonderful and each unique – so I wanted to pick up themes without favouring one poem over another.
This was the first time I’d illustrated for letterpress so I visited Paekakariki Press to find out what would work best technically. To honour the craft process, I chose dip pen to draw with.
This book would itself be part of a family so I considered how the shape of my illustration and the colour of cover paper might sit well with the first two books.
Only then did I start on draft illustrations exploring several ideas. The plait won: an intensely personal thing, plaiting time, people, lives...
Plait my own hair; take a picture to draw from. It was a simple idea when I thought it quickly. The reality was me in contortions of reference, sheet of white paper behind my unruly mop, unable to see what I was doing…
Time in the silver of my hair, there was time, too, in my Gillot 303 nib, with me since college. A dip pen knows its own mind. We circled around each other scratchily until I’d re-learned its ways.
For print, I drew in black. Expecting blackness from my ink, it gave me the translucency of watercolour… so for letterpress, I scanned and flattened it.
Just as the illustration is part of the book, I have become part of it too, following its production, hearing poems at its launch and raising a glass (and a sketchbook) to this very human endeavour.
Read more on the illustration process in my conversation with John Simmons of 26 and Dark Angels, published in the 26 newsletter.
Cover typography and book design by Paekakariki Press. Family Matters is available from Paekakariki Press at £15.
Further information on Dark Angels can be found at darkangelswriters.com.
