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The Shrine – a poem-comic about archaeology; in Ink Brick No. 3.

I’m really pleased to be able to say that I have a poem-comic published in Ink Brick 3. It’s called The Shrine, and is a poem-comic about my work as illustrator at the site of Catalhoyuk, and the visual relationship and interplay between my work there and the site’s visual legacy.

Poetry comics was a genre I discovered almost by accident – well, entirely by accident: I found a copy of Dino Buzzatti‘s poem comic Orpheus: Poema a fumetti in a book sale five years ago. Since then, I’ve discovered creators like Bianca Stone, and through her the poetry comics journal Ink Brick.

My interest in poetry-comics is not really because I fancy myself a poet – it’s more because the genre is defining itself as a genuine hybrid: not just poetry-illustrated-by-comics, but a true merger of the principles and practices of the two. With a poetry comic, it’s impossible to read the text or the images by themselves: the work only makes sense as an interplay between the two.

In this I see an element of my aspiration for comics and archaeology. Yes, part of the genre will be made up of “archaeology-illustrated-by-comics”, but I’m hoping that there will emerge comics which, in both principle and practice, merge the two elements as closely as in poetry-comics. The Shrine is my attempt to take a first tentative step in that direction.

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Inked!

Panel from “The Shrine” – to be published in Ink Brick 3.

I’m very pleased to be able to say that I’ve had my poem-comic The Shrine accepted for publication in Ink Brick #3 – the journal of comics poetry. It’s a piece a did some time ago, but haven’t ever found quite the right place for it.

The Shrine is based on my own experiences of working as an archaeological illustrator at the site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey – specifically, working with the visual legacy of the illustrations produced for the site in the 1960s. The complex relationships between past and present that evolved within the project – between the current team and its heritage; between popular and scholarly interpretations; between my visualisations of the archaeology and those produced thirty years before.

Poetry comics is a new creative genre for me, but one that interests me a lot. I feel like its approach to narrative and structure has a lot to offer all the other comics genres I’ve been working with: comics and archaeology, comics and medicine, comics and information.

Anyway, I’m very pleased to have had The Shrine accepted in Ink Brick. I’ve been a big fan of the journal since I first discovered it a year ago. Check out the Ink Brick store to get a copy!

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Building With Ink Bricks

“Ink Brick” – poetry and comics, issue 1 out now.

Another delight that’s dropped through the postbox is the past few weeks has been the first issue of Ink Brick. This is a new journal dedicated to:

… work that crosses the borders between comics and poetry, and to critical writing about the hybrid form.

Eight writer/illustrators have come together to present a small volume of work that does, indeed, explore all the potential manifestations of this hybrid genre. There are examples of illustrated poems (Keeping Time, Alexander Rothman), graphic short stories with a poetic feel (Black Magic, Gary Sullivan; 9 Weeks, L. Nichols; Mobilzation, Simone Kearney), free-text with visuals that flirt with abstraction (Untitled, Simon Moreton; The Intermission Festival, John Hankiewicz), and hybridized, text-image poems (Avenge Me, Eavesdropper, Paul K. Tunis; God Complex, Bianca Stone).

As befits it’s description as “poetry”, all of these works approach the notion of a hypbrid genre in a highly individual way; no two creators link text and image in quite the same way, nor manifest the “poem” using entirely the same mechanics. As such, it gives an excellent survey of what this hybrid form is all about: the bringing together and the manipulation of words and images in new and unexpected combinations. Interestingly, too, this collection also highlights the ability of such combinations to accommodate not just divergent styles, but divergent inspirations – from personal/memoir (Mobilization) to metaphor (God Complex) to tone-poem (Untitled). 

Ink Brick’s manifesto of “crossing borders” is all exciting and inspirational stuff. As I’ve noted before, it’s of particular interest to me because I can see the potential for this sort of approach in both of my particular areas of interest: graphic medicine to archaeology comics. Identification of these works as “poetry” sidesteps the restrictions usually imposed by more didactic graphic approaches.

Issue 1 is out now, available from inkbrick.com and is recommended for anyone interested in exploring this hybrid form.

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