Plough Publishing Press recently released the genre-bending poetry comics anthology, Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry, by cartoonist Julian Peters, coinciding with National Poetry Month in April.  (Fanbase Press’ interview with Peters may be found here.)  The publisher has been very generous to the Fanbase Press staff, as we are now able to share an exclusive excerpt from the book!

Synopsis

Over the course of 24 classic poems — from Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird” to W. B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old” — Montreal-based artist Julian Peters has created stunning visual interpretations of some of the world’s most beloved poems. Each iconic poem is interpreted for the page using a different and compelling visual style, showcasing both the diversity of the source material and the storytelling possibilities of the comics artform.

“Poetry and comics may seem like an unlikely combination, but the two art forms actually share a number of common elements,” writes Julian Peters in the book’s preface. “In setting out to turn beautiful poetry into comics, I wanted to pay tribute to the way these poems made me feel, to spend time with them, to pull them in as close to me as possible in the way that, as someone who draws comics, felt the most natural.”

Poems to See By features poems by Maya Angelou, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Tess Gallagher, Thomas Hardy, Robert Hayden, Seamus Heaney, William Ernest Henley, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes, John Philip Johnson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edgar Allen Poe, Christina Rossetti, Carl Sandburg, Siegfried Sassoon, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas, William Wordsworth, and W. B. Yeats.

We hope that you will enjoy the below preview, and please be sure to contact your local comic book shop or book seller to purchase a copy!