The Marriage of Art with Poetry
Greetings, my dear digital friends.
While my first poetry book, Echoes Lost in Stars, was still in manuscript form, my publisher, Literary Revelations Publishing House, had located a brilliant young artist for me to work with out of Montreal to design the book cover.
As many of you know, I live in Upstate New York. For us, Canada is less of a foreign country and more of a delightfully eccentric cousin 90 miles to the nord. Knowing Montreal is closer to home than New York City, I instantly felt a familial connection.
Her name is Iuliana Irimia. She and I connected via Instagram. We never met in person and conducted the entire cover build – from ideation through final copy – via chat and email.
First Contact
We made first contact in late November 2023. I was highly cognizant of the fact we were planning to release the book on Amazon in March 2024. With only 4 months to go, the cover needed immediate attention.
I was instantly impressed with Iuliana. She wanted to understand me, my motivations, my writing. She asked for sample poetry so she could understand the tone.
Soon thereafter, she began asking clarifying questions about the book’s structure and how it might connect to the cover art.
For those who have not read it yet, Echoes Lost in Stars is assembled into 4 sections, each with 30 poems. The sections move thematically from light to dark: Sun, Sun(light), Star(light), Stars.
It was this inherent curiosity and focused intention that helped establish a wonderful collegial tone throughout the course of our collaboration.
Engagement
Within a few weeks, she had emailed me 3 distinctive ideas for the cover.
What I think I loved most is that she recognized the substantial water motifs throughout my poetry. And she wanted to marry the concept of water and ripples and reflections (echoes) into the cover design.
Brilliant. Here were the 3 black and white, rendered cover options she provided me…
All of them were utterly gorgeous. Wouldn’t you agree?
(if perchance your email displays these images as elongated or distorted, click on the images to see their proper rendering… stupid WordPress)
I could not make up my mind. I genuinely loved all Options. But in particular, Option 1 and Option 3.
So, I left the decision up to the smartest, most creative women I know – my wife, my daughters, and my publisher. And while I was strongly leaning toward Option 1 (so haunting!!), everyone else came back with Option 3.
Majority ruled. Option 3 was it. Its Art Deco imagery won the day.
Quirks and All
Not sure if it is me, or the writer’s temperament in general, but I am very particular… one might even characterize me as fussy.
I have an almost obsessive fixation on small details that, in total, create a more complete, cohesive picture… really, much like a poem. The paucity of words in poetry requires a poet to truly think through (obsess over) the right word choices to fit the themes and tone of a poem… they truly can unify or break the piece.
And so we approached the editing phase of Option 3 working through many, many revisions. I won’t bore you with the details, but there were weeks going back and forth on…
- Fonts
- Color schemes
- Rays and patterns
- Publisher logo placement
It must have truly tested Iuliana’s patience at times. But you would have never known it! She understood my vision and stood by me the entire time, quirks and all.
And for all my compulsive edits, I could not get past that original, small shadow figure in the bottom right corner of the cover (a child? a ghost?) – my eye still goes back to that misty lake – and that tiny lost figure standing there looking off into…. what?
It captured the notion of loneliness, of being lost, so perfectly for me. And that image did not change from the very beginning.
By Christmas, we were here…
Literally, for 2 more weeks, we kept refining and refining fonts to arrive at the final version of the book cover.
The “big day” was looming.
Saying “I Do”
By early January 2024, the book cover was finished.
In less than 6 weeks, Iuliana had taken it from ideation all the way through dozens of revisions to the final version that you will find today if you visit Amazon.com to purchase your own copy. 😉
As in all strong relationships, communication and patience were essential to our success together. And I cannot recommend Iuilana’s services enough for anyone seeking an artist to custom-design a book cover for your next literary masterpiece.
You can click on the Books by PS section heading at the top of the page to see the final cover of Echoes Lost in Stars… a true marriage of art and poetry.
And as always, dear friends, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments in the Leave a Reply section below. As I am just getting started with my Author website, I want to ensure that you find these weekly posts interesting, informative, and/or useful to you as writers and readers.
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If you like my poetry, I publish a new poem weekly at PoetrybyPS.com. We have built a wonderful community of several thousand readers. You will be most welcome!
-PS Conway ☘️ ☘️ ☘️