Image/text #1

Image by Darryl Joel Berger.

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So...many of the poems in Stowaways came out of an back-and-forth email collaboration with Darryl Joel Berger, a writer/visual artist based in Kingston.

So I thought I'd share some of them over the next few weeks. (With his permission, of course...)

This illustration is one of my favourites and was the basis for my poem "Pond Scum."

My initial thoughts were something like this: Smoker? Carnival? Tadpoles? 

This one went through several radical drafts. The premise remained the same but the details all shifted.

But in the end I managed to get the St. Malo Frog Follies into the story. And a motel hot tub. And flossing.

Stowaways will be launched May 21 at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg.