“Now then, poetry comics…”
On Thursday, June 7, I will be giving a talk at the Keats-Shelley House (in Rome!) on the subject of adapting classic poetry into comics. I will also be taking part in the awards ceremony for a children and young adults’ poetry competition that will take place the next day, also at the Keats-Shelley House.http://www.keats-shelley-house.org/en/news/julian-peters-at-ksh-on-thursday-9-june-at-3pm
The Battle of the Plains of Abraham as a food fight. I proposed this comic for the annual comics competition organized by Hachette Canada, whose theme this year was “food”. I unfortunately did not win, but the creation of these pages did give me a valuable opportunity to experiment with colour, and with a more cartoony style. In the remainder of the comic, the French and British were to launch numerous other characteristic food items, including french fries, “ragout de boulettes”, cheddar and haggis (courtesy of the Fraser’s Highlanders). In the end, among the smouldering (and delicious) battle debris, poutine was to be discovered.
To my great delight, my comic book adaptation of John Keats’ “la Belle Dame Sans Merci” is to be included in an exhibition taking place this year at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome. http://www.keats-shelley-house.org/ The show, entitled “Illustrating Keats”, will include images from all the major illustrated editions of Keats’ poetry from 1856 onwards, as well as some contemporary interpretations of his extremely visually-inspiring works. The originals of three of the pages of my comic are already in Rome awaiting the tremendous honour of being hung on the walls of the very house in which one of the greatest poets to ever wield the English-language spent his final days (before dying of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five). The show runs from April 9 to November 24.
The new issue of Code-barres magazine, on the theme of “indécence”, and containing a 2-page spread of sensual erotica by yours truly, is now available in magazine stores throughout the province of Quebec and in Ottawa. A word of warning: The drawings are so indecent that they will probably bring about the collapse of our entire bourgeois value system, resulting in a period of anarchy and destruction that will eventually pave the way for a new golden age of free love and 24-hour slam poetry coverage on all TV channels (viewing will be mandatory). http://codebarresmagazine.com/?p=323#more-323
As if adapting classic poems were too commercial, I am now working on a comic based on the lyrics of a a song written by an obscure turn-of-the-eighteenth-century Montreal painter, Jean Berger. The comic will appear in a show of art inspired by this rather scoundrelous character that will be held at Concordia University’s FOFA Gallery between April 30 and May 25. Here is a link to the exhibition website, with a little interview with yours truly: http://jeanbergerproject.tumblr.com/
Mon adaptation du poème “Le bateau ivre” par Arthur Rimbaud (1871) en bandes-dessinées. Une traduction anglaise de cette BD apparaîtra prochainement dans l’anthologie “The Graphic Canon” éditée par Russ Kick et publiée par Seven Stories Press: http://www.sevenstories.com/book/?GCOI=58322100888750
(Note that in the English version, the haulers swinging from painted stakes on the first page are fully clothed, while in the French version they have now been completely undressed. Although I tried to keep both the original French text and the translated English version I was using in mind at all times while creating the accompanying drawings, I overlooked the fact that, unlike in the English translation, the haulers are specified by Rimbaud to be “cloués nus”, thus adding an element of sexual humiliation to the deaths of these metaphors for societal restraints at the hands of irrational freedom, represented by the “peaux-rouges”.)
