Haiku Comics Pep Talk

Exercises in brevity

About a month ago, I was honored to be invited to participate in Grant Snider’s annual haiku comics tradition, joining fellow comic artists in celebrating Poetry Comics Month. He’s a brilliant and prolific comics artist that I’ve had the pleasure of following for years. I’m a long-time fan of Snider’s wise yet playful Incidental Comics and beautiful published books - most recently, his graphic novel Poetry Comics.

For the occasion, I contributed a series of haiku comics about the process of looking for hope and finding it unexpected places.

When he asked me to join, I was having a hard month. To cope, I was writing and cartooning a lot of wordy brain slop. His poetry prompt, following the traditional 3-line Japanese haiku convention of a 5/7/5 syllable count, made me pause and consider brevity for the first time in a while.

I turned my daily diary comics practice into morning haikus, carefully selecting my words, as well as the emotions I was dealing with.

It turned out to be such a therapeutic exercise, to distill what I was feeling into a few syllables and panels. It helped calm my mind a little each day and get me through the rough patch.

I’m very grateful to Grant Snider for the opportunity and the nudge to make more time for poetry [comics] in my life. And I’m honored to be included in such a talented cohort of comics artists! Check out their stunning contributions here and follow their work online.

As always, thank you for reading and being here. Excited to share updates to my new gift shop soon - stay tuned! Hope you are finding pockets of sanity and calm during this very busy season…

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