Trash Day

 

5/30/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

My attempts at haiku comics so far have been loose interpretations of the poetic form, which I’m fine with. But because I’m also trying to draw the comics spontaneously on location, I had been frustrated with the difficulty of relating each haiku line with an image, which I saw as an ideal integration of the two forms.

Seeing the haiku comics exhibit at Push/Pull Gallery, I was liberated by the many different ways artists are integrating haiku with their comics. As with all comics, with or without haiku, the most effective writing avoids simply repeating with words what is already being expressed by the visual image. Without being redundant, words and images should support and augment each other. In addition, the haiku lines do not have to align directly with images (though I saw many examples in which this was done masterfully).

My brain still buzzing with inspiration the day after seeing the exhibit, I took a walk and captured the essence of trash day in Maple Leaf.

So far, my method is to sketch first, then write later. I am neither illustrating haiku, nor writing captions for sketches. It feels more like reflecting on the sketches I’ve made and then commenting on them – with as few words as possible.