Drawing a poem

Last summer I approached John Ronan with the idea of creating some images 

inspired by his poetry.He was very receptive to the idea and invited me to choose 

the poems that appealed to me most. 

From the beginning of the project I determined not to ‘illustrate‘ the poems I’d 

chosen. I wanted my visual images to have a sense of the poetic and to come 

through my own experience, yet use the eloquence of Johns poetry to jump-start 

my imagination. 

I found myself most attracted to poems whose subject matter had a spark of 

whimsy at the same time dealing with issues of homesickness, aging and mortality. 

I quickly began to notice  by spending time reading his poetry that John is an 

extremely visual writer. He notices things. The things in the landscape that grab 

us... crows in trees guarding a road a few towns over , a view out a window on the 

space shuttle, young children looking at sculpture in a museum, a scene in a 

kitchen decades in the past. Those things you catch in the corner of your eye as 

you’re going through your list of daily errands and challenges. John notices these 

things that others pass over.  The people and animals and sounds, the sparks and 

the glimmers. 

He’s right there in the landscape. As observer.  You are standing there beside him 

and he’s pointing it all out to you. Well really he’s telling you, singing it in fact, as a 

poet will. By spending time reading these poems I can almost glimpse the 

processes he invokes in composing a poem and I reiterate to myself why I’d rather 

paint than write. 

While looking through my sketchbooks at images I was fond of, I began noticing 

many drawings that worked really well with the poems I’d picked out. I began to 

work  the drawings into prints for some of the poems. For others I used a more 

improvised method of painting. I’m pleased with the results and very grateful to 

John for giving a wide berth in the selection and interpretation of the eleven poems 

I’ve chosen to work with.