April is National Poetry Month, and to mark the occasion, Plough Publishing Press is releasing a graphic novel anthology with a difference. Every story in Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry is illustrated by Julian Peters, but the text comes from a number of beloved poets, from Maya Angelou to W.B. Yeats. The Hollywood Reporter has an exclusive preview of one of the stories from the collection.
In the preface to the book, Peters writes, “Poetry and comics may seem like an unlikely combination, but the two art forms actually share a number of common elements. 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.”
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In addition to the aforementioned Angelou and Yeats, poets whose work Peters tackles in the collection include e.e. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth and Edgar Allan Poe. THR’s preview is a poem by playwright and novelist Langston Hughes, “Juke Box Love Song.”
Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry will be available March 31. Below, three promotional videos created by Plough Publishing Press for the book, demonstrating the visual diversity Peters brings to the book.
