Artist's Statement:

I do not see myself as a visual artist. I’ve always been more comfortable manipulating words than creating images, so when a poet friend encouraged me to illustrate a few years ago, I had low (or no) expectations of succeeding at it. Much to my surprise, I discovered that I love making illustrated poems, editing and shaping to communicate with both language and image. I’ve come to believe the process is good for editing poetry whether I end up using an image or not. Thinking about how best to fit words in a limited space encourages economy of language and more precision. Looping words around a picture makes me rethink line breaks, spacing and juxtaposition. Simply staring at a line on an image gives me a visceral sense of what works.

And then there’s the music. I hear music when I write. Jazz music is the rhythm of my poetry. I want the images I use, especially in my jazz poems, to allow my readers to hear it, too. In some of my illustrated poems I want the reader to be improvisational, to read the strophes in any order and still hear the music of the poem. To me, that is the best thing my poems can do: appeal to a reader’s senses and allow him or her to engage with the poem enough to hear my music.

You can reach Shara Faskowitz here .