Arthur Rimbaud – Chanson de la plus haute tour – Song from the Highest Tower

chansondelaplushautetour3
I’m not altogether satisfied with this image (still finding my feet with watercolour), although I like the composition. There too, though, I’m annoyed by an inconsistency in the shadows: Why doesn’t Rimbaud’s body cast a shadow on the floor along with the shadow of the battlements?

The poem is perhaps my absolute favourite of Rimbaud’s. I won’t even bother trying to translate it, though; its beauty is all in its musicality, the way it seems to spiral gracefully into the ether like the smoke from one of Rimbaud’s clay pipe: Continue reading

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“Annabel Lee” Video by Renée Latulippe and Interview

Annabel Lee videoThe immensely talented Renée Latulippe has created a video featuring her interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” that incorporates the drawings in my comics adpatation of the poem. I was really impressed with the results, and it made me wish all my poetry comics could be given a similar treatment.

Click on the link below to view other “poetry videos” on Renée’s No Water River website, along with a whole slew of other resources aimed at presenting poetry to children: http://www.nowaterriver.com/

Also included with the video is an interview by Renée with yours truly, which I have copied below:

Julian, who are you, where are you, and how long have you been a doodling fool?

I am an illustrator, comic book artist, graduate student and language instructor living in Montreal, Canada. I have been drawing comics since before I could write. In my earliest stories, featuring Speeder the Struthiomimus (an ostrich-like dinosaur), I would dictate the dialogue to my dad, who would fill in the dialogue balloons I had left blank for him. Until the age of twelve I churned out all kinds of comics on the most disparate subjects, but then when I hit adolescence –and this is one of my great regrets- I gave up drawing comics entirely, and didn’t really begin again until I was in my early twenties. I can’t help wondering sometimes how much more advanced my comics-making skills would be now if I hadn’t had that “lost decade” to catch up on. Continue reading

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The Great Gatsby

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Click on image to enlarge

Prompted by the release of its umpteenth cinematic adaptation, I have just reread The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time. I was particularly struck this time around by the degree to which the novel’s ultimate emotional payoff seems so much greater than what would appear to be warranted by the emotional entanglements of its caricaturish, at times almost cartoonish characters (Gatsby himself occasionally comes off a little like an older, hopeless-romantic version of Richie Rich). That Fitzgerald achieves this feat is due in large part to the novel’s magisterial, sweepingly poetic and universal last page. It is the closing lines of this last page to end all last pages that this drawing seeks in part to illustrate [spoiler alert!]:

“…I  thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning-
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

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The Temptations of Fast Food

"The Temptations of Fast Food." Oil on canvas.

“The Temptations of Fast Food.” Oil on canvas. Circa 2000.

I think the best moment for me would be right before removing the sandwich from its waxed paper wrapping. I’ll be sitting at the table, carefully arranging the fries and the drink on the tray on either side of the colourfully enfolded sandwich, maybe reading the fun facts and the ad copy on the paper placemat, full of benign indulgence -no, to be honest it’s really an almost poetic appreciation for the artfully arranged sequences of adjectives, unfallibly calibrated so as set my mouth a-watering: “melted,” “old-fashioned,” “premium,” “zesty,” “hickory-smoked,” “baconated.” The words seem to combine with the colours of the accompanying photograph and the wrapper, the smell of the fries, and the memory of the television ad to conjure up a sense of irresistible anticipation. Continue reading

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My Encounter with Egon Schiele

Schiele Self-Portrait

Click to enlarge

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the terrace outside of a Kaffeehaus in Vienna when I was approached by this spindly-framed, spiky-haired fellow holding a fold up easel and a paint-box.

“Do your portrait, mein herr? Tventy-five euros!”

“Twenty-five euros? I’m afraid that’s a little much for me. I’m traveling on a budget…”

“But, mein herr… I am Egon Schiele!”

“Who?”

“Dzee Zecessionist painter?”

“I’m sorry, I study art history at Concordia University. I don’t know art from before 1980…”

Ach, never mind! But tventy-five euros ist fast geschenkt… it is practically a gift, trust me!

“Ok, ok! But quickly please, uh… Egon, if you don’t mind! I want to get to the Schnitzelmuseum before it closes.” Continue reading

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Arthur Rimbaud – “Sensations”

The very first poem I adapted into comics:

sensations

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Les Loups-Garous du Québec – Werewolves of Quebec

Loup-Garou au Québec
“L’on apprend de Saint-Roch, près du Cap Mauraska [Kamouraska], qu’il y a un loup-garou qui court les côtes sous la forme d’un mendiant, qui, avec le talent de persuader, et en promettant ce qu’il ne peut tenir, a celui d’obtenir ce qu’il demande. On dit que cet animal, avec le secours de ses deux pieds de derrière, arriva à Québec le 17 dernier, et qu’il en repartit le 18 suivant, dans le dessein de suivre sa mission jusqu’à Montréal. Cette bête est, dit-on, dans son espèce aussi dangereuse que celle qui parut l’année dernière dans le Gévauchan [Gévaudan], c’est pourquoi qu’on exhorte le public de s’en méfier comme d’un loup ravissant.”  –La Gazette de Québec, le 14 juillet 1776

“By accounts from St. Rock, near Cap Mouraska, we learn, that there is a Ware Wolf wandering about that Neighbourhood, in the Form of a Beggar, which, to the Talent of persuading People to believe what he himself is ignorant of, and promising what he cannot perform, adds that of obtaining what he desires. It is said that this Animal came, by the Assistance of his two hind Legs, to Quebec the 17th of last Month, and set out from hence the 18th following, with a Design to persue his Errand to Montreal.—This Beast is said to be as dangerous as that which appear’d last Year in the Country of Gevaudan; wherefore it is recommended to the Public to be as cautious of him as it would be of a ravenous Wolf.”    –The Quebec Gazette, July 14, 1776

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Confidence!

Confidence! Confidence,’ you say,
‘Is what I look for in a man.’
The confidence within those eyes that splay
Your undressed breasts like cracked eggs in a pan.

The confidence to make you feel unwell,
The confidence to stow away his heart,
The confidence to send them all to hell,
And stand behind his shitty art.

The confidence to find it all a bore,
The confidence to be a bore at that,
The confidence to start an unjust war,
The confidence to wear a douchey hat.

The confidence to say, ‘I don’t understand you,’
And have that pass for understanding you.

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The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins

windhover2A little experimentation with oil pastels. My conclusion is that they are very messy. Windhover is another name for a kestrel, a type of small falcon. Gerard Manley Hopkins, a reclusive Jesuit priest, was wildly ahead of its time in terms of form, to the point that, when his poems were first published, three decades after his death, people could scarcely believe they had been written in the Victorian period. It has been suggested that Hopkins’s poetry, ostensibly written for the greater glory of God, in fact channeled a suppressed homoerotic yearning, and to be sure, rarely has a bird been the object of so ardent a gaze as in this stunning poem. Continue reading

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Charles Baudelaire – Evening Harmony – Harmonie du soir

Click on image to enlarge

Click on image to enlarge

My translation of a fantabulous poem by Charles Baudelaire, taken from his Les Fleurs du mal (1857). The poem is written according to an unusual structure known as a pantoum, which apparently originated in Malaysia.

The illustration of the poem is from at least twelve years ago.

Evening Harmony

Now is the time; on their stems gently wheeling,
The flowers, like censers, dissolve in the air,
Embalming the evening with perfume and prayer;
Desolate waltzes and languorous reeling! Continue reading

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