Creating poetry is a joy and an endeavour. Handing your carefully selected verses over to another to design as your book takes shape, is like handing over your child to a new childminder. Someone else is in charge, temporarily. If they are experienced, they will ask you what you expect, what your parameters you are, what type of parent you are, then re-assure that they understand your needs as they wave you off. I was lucky to find a talented and sensitive designer who understood my vision, who also helped to shape my artwork into the book’s cover; I trusted her to pull the whole thing together.
As the poems are of the soul: tender, sensitive, heavy, existing in the half-light of the human experience, I wanted some of that to translate onto the page. The result showcases my vision so well: the three sections, Discovery, Holy Fire and Resurrection are clearly defined, the poems flow easily across the page. It feels like a poetic archipelago from the sea of my imagination. My gift of words to the willing and open souls in the world.
Suzy Rowland