Reflection of the Process of Drafty-Draft
I used an exercise that we had used in class to start my drafting process for the drafty-draft poem. I took a photo that really drew my attention visually, I put it up on my computer and drafted it out the first day. After the first draft of the poem, I did not look at the photo any longer. Each progressing day, I fluffed up the words and added lines that I thought would be super interesting to hear out loud with the rest of the sentence. And work the words until I had a rhythm that I really liked. Or well… that is at least how I intended the process to be. I did the first draft from the photo, but then each passing day. I really struggled to write and draft on paper. The curse of perfectionism really ruined the process for me. No matter what ideas popped in my head, I felt like putting them down on paper made them real and permanent. Even though I knew otherwise. It was a mental block that prevented me from being my best creative self. Eventually, I took it as a sign that I need to be doing exercises that require me to go outside of my comfort zone more often.
My book has a huge floral and garden motif to it. This was personal because the content of the poem is kind of sad and dark. And I intentionally wanted to give an air of “happiness” as a sort of trick. I went on to Pinterest and looked up floral designs that really resonated with me and used that for inspiration. I specifically placed the words of the poem in an interesting way to capture the readers’ attention and drag it through the book. Looking at this design and brainstorming for what I want my final artist book to look like. I really got a sense of impermanence as a theme through my draft of poems so far. So I think plants/floral theme with the cycles of nature implemented in the design of my artist book would be a really cool concept given the content of the draft of the poems. That is something, that I want to try and capsulate over the course of the semester is to try and find a very broad but common motif or theme across all of my work and then apply that into the design process of the artist book.
