Poetic Fragments

Poetic Fragments is my dream project — not only because it is a poetry collection, my favourite genre of literature, nor because I have followed the poet, Ali Akkour, since I first encountered his poetry years ago, but because we share countless themes across our works.

Drawing this collection was a profound reflection on everything I have been obsessing over for years. While drawing the fragments, I experimented with visual metaphor and allowed myself to explore every possible imagination to achieve the best illustrations I could.

At the poet's request, the entire collection was drawn in black and white. Had I the choice, I would have drawn it in blue alone — yet I am pleased with its two single colours, which still intensely express the immense blue within it: the melancholy that, to my eye, is the dominant mood of the collection.

He wrote extensively about home, the tenderness of the beloved's hand, trees and breathtaking nature, and the many shapes of the relationship between people and the natural world. He wrote about the idea of writing itself — details the poet recounts with sweetness and tenderness across his forty-one poems.