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KATHY LOHRUM COTTON
. . . let's bring more poetry into the world
More poetry paired with art
haiga, broadsides & book-spine poems
Forms like haiga, broadsides and book-spine poems are examples of how an art component expands the audience for poetry. Print a batch of haiga on card stock to mail as postcards. Frame pieces for gallery exhibits. Create a group project with a collection of themed broadsides. Make a book-spine birthday or holiday poem from stacked titles on your bookshelf and send it as a snapshot greeting.
Haiga
Combine a visual element with a haiku poem to create the Japanese form, haiga. The intention is to make a whole greater than the parts. The poem does not describe the picture; the art does not illustrate the poem. Photographs have become a common background for haiga.
The traditional English haiku maintains a three-line syllable count of 5-7-5. A typical contemporary haiku has one to four lines, no syllable count, a long/short or short/long asymmetry and includes a caesura.
Kathy has published more than a hundred haiga and haiku in venues including Daily Haiga, Cattails, A Hundred Gourds, Hedgerow, Highland Park Poetry, Illinoispoets Haiga Gallery, Red Moon Anthology, Wild Plum, Bottle Rockets and Wildflower Press.
Broadsides
A broadside is simply a single sheet printed on one side, like a poster. A poetry broadside is a one-page poem accompanied by art.
This broadside series celebrates National Poetry Month 2021with poems by members of the Illinois State Poetry Society (ISPS) Southern Chapter. Kathy created an art background for each submission and set the collection in a color-flow pattern using Adobe InDesign. View the individual pages on the ISPS website at:
www.illinoispoets.org/pdf/poetrymonth.pdf
Book-Spine Poems
These poems are considered “found” poetry: a creation made up of words from other sources. They are simply arranged from a stack of books so their titles create the poem.
After winning a contest with this novel form, Kathy took her iPhone to a library, a book store and her own book shelves to create dozens of these poems for a Poetry Month exhibit. Snap a photo of each stack or use titles as each line of a written poem.
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