I never thought I liked comics. Mostly I don’t.
Comic books were nowhere to be found in my rural childhood. By the time I was grown I’d seen four or five at most.
They seemed unreadable. Everything was all flashing lights and leaping supermen and explosions.
Therefore, when graphic novels became a thing, I had no interest.
I have changed.
Chris Fink, head of the English Department at Beloit College, where I was teaching this semester, handed me a copy of a comic book, Map of My Heart. It was written and drawn by John Porcellino, a cartoonist who lives in Beloit and the creator of King-Cat. Chris thought I’d like the book because it has a lot of nature in it.
Being honest, that was the first comic book I ever read.
John teaches a course, “Making Comix Out of Life,” and one day I met him in Chris’s office. John’s a shy man somewhere in his 50s who wears glasses and a ball cap. I told him I liked his book and asked if I could sit in on one of his classes.
Sure.
The day I showed up he was talking about words. That comes first in comic-drawing for him. And he calls the words poetry.
“Poetry is just writing and hitting return a lot,” he said. “You can sneak poetry into people’s conscious by using the form of comics.”
My brain was churning, thinking of all the things I could do with comics. I could make a graphic memoir out of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. I could turn some of my poems into comics. (At least I could if I knew how to draw.)
There’s more.
Chris and John paired up to create a little comic book of sorts. Chris writes and records flash essays for his public radio station, and he collected twenty of these into a book, Forage Like a Bear, which John illustrated with comics. The book is just out, available at Spit and a Half—my copy has arrived and I like it.
There’s even more.
When the climate anthology All We Can Save came out, I was introduced to the art of cartoonist Madeleine Jubilee Saito.
The form that Madeleine’s poetry comics takes is a box divided into four squares. I started calling these Wisdom Quadrants, and I “taught” them in my nature journaling classes. Really I introduced folks to Madeleine’s work and we fumbled our way through creating one.
Now Madeleine too has a new book, You Are a Sacred Place: Visual Poems for Living in Climate Crisis. Both Naomi Klein and Krista Tippett have blurbed it.
The best news of all.
I asked Madeleine to teach a short, hour-long workshop next Sunday online via Zoom. I want to introduce more folks to Madeleine’s work and help promote her new book.
If you want to attend Sunday’s “Poetry Comics” workshop, online via Zoom, a ticket is $11.
If you’re already registered for Journaling the Garden, then you have a ticket.
One last strange thing.
Madeleine is originally from Rockford, Illinois, 10 miles away from Beloit, Wisconsin, where Chris and John live.
I guess cheese-eating turns out really talented people.
Question
Is your brain churning too? How could you incorporate comics into your work? Want to try your hand at it?
Looking forward to Sunday. Do you know about Landings-- by Arwen Donahue? I think you would love it. https://www.hubcity.org/books/nonfiction/landings-a-crooked-creek-farm-year
YES please! Comix your memoir