Editor’s Note: this interview conducted via email has been lightly edited for formatting and clarity, and does not necessarily reflect the views of this website.
- Tell me about some of your first memories associated with this creative practice: what’s the first poem you remember illustrating? What did you draw? What first inspired you to pick up a pen (pencil? crayon?), and start to draw around the words?
My first illustrated poem was in November 2017, an excerpt of Mark Doty’s “Messiah (Christmas Portions).”
About a year before, I had discovered an old spiral-bound journal after we had to clean up a leak in our garage. I found the diary entries boring and often full of self-loathing, but I loved the hand-lettered cover I’d made to decorate it.
Even better, I discovered some drawings I’d made while studying abroad in Buenos Aires from 1998-1999. I’d never thought of myself as an artist, but looking at that forgotten work, I realized I loved that record of paying attention to the city, and that I had more artistic skill than I’d given myself credit for.
I thought, “I wish I had spent more time cultivating this kind of beautiful art practice and less time navel-gazing about my shortcomings.”
And then I realized there was nothing stopping me from doing so now.
A friend had told me about “Bullet Journaling,” which is a system developed by Ryder Carroll to create a bespoke planner/journal/whatever kind of book out of a blank notebook. I felt intimidated by it at first, (on Instagram, you could spend years ogling elaborate Bullet Journals) but as I learned more—especially that Carroll had begun the practice to help him with his ADHD—I realized that I could turn a journaling practice into both a record of my everyday and an intentional artistic practice and a way to have a custom planner for my neurodivergent mind.
In my first bullet journal, I wrote “beauty” on the front cover. In my second, I began the practice of including a quote or poem at the beginning of the book, as well as a separate poem to introduce each month.
I don’t entirely remember why I decided to include poetry. I think I had just subscribed to Poets.org’s Poem-a-Day, and the slow, thoughtful beauty of poetry reminded me of the slow, thoughtful beauty of drawing.
2. As you may know, there’s a long tradition in poetry of ekphrasis, which are poems that describe, interpret, and engage another piece of art. Famous examples include “Kitchen Made with Supper at Emmaus, or The Mulata” by Natasha Trethewey, and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats.
It seems like your practice is a form of reverse ekphrasis, or creating visual art inspired by poetry. How would you describe the relationship between visual art and poetry?
I think both poetry and visual art connect with emotion and spirit more readily than prose does. Poetry has to ‘tell things slant,’ and, at least for two-dimensional art, you have one image to convey or express whatever you want to say. There’s also a particular kind of attention you need to read/write poetry or to make visual art. It’s deeper and slower.
3. Tell me about a particularly memorable pairing of poem and illustration. Why do you think this pairing made such an impact on you?
in November of 2018, I illustrated “Peacock Island” by Jennifer Kronovet. I found a picture of the actual German island she describes in the poem, and using watercolors, reproduced it on the page, carefully taping off sections to protect the white space for both the poem’s title and the body of the poem and the castle on the island, then hand lettering the title, poem, and drawing in the white castle.
Watercolor is HARD, and requires a lot of patience. The hardest thing is leaving white space—rather than -adding- white paint, you have to carefully avoid those sections you want to leave blank. I was surprised I pulled off my idea as well as I did.
I remembered how proud I was of that watercolor, but had completely forgotten the difficult topic of the poem. “Peacock Island” is about the abuse of power. When she described writing the poem, Kronovet said that for her, Peacock Island is a “place of artifice and hubris” and that to her, its existence seemed reflective of how Western Civilization has (mis)used power.
Paging through that journal, I see a lot of wrestling with the toxic power of the US and of white people in general. At the time, I was reading about institutionalized racism, incarceration, and mujerista theology.
In particular, I was disturbed by the Trump administration forcibly separating refugee kids from their families and putting them in cages. Those separations echoed a trauma from my past. Starting when I was six, my parents placed my two siblings into a private/religious group home called Sunshine Acres. They were institutionalized for three and seven years, respectively.
As a child, the separation was a kind of death, one our parents caused on purpose. The experience terrorized all three of us.
The year I read “Peacock Island,” I had to watch our government terrorize children and their families on a vast scale.
A few pages after the Peacock poem, I illustrated a verse from Isaiah, “Unto us a child is born” with tanks, barbed wire and bombs in the background.
There is something healing about meditating on abuse by making art. It does not make the pain, grief, or lament go away, of course. If anything, it forces you to reckon slowly with those difficult emotions. However, it does allow you to redeem some part of the horror.
In the middle of our grief and trauma, looking at horror square in the face and transforming it into something beautiful is a powerful, powerful tool. It is a way of reclaiming the agency and control we lost to abusers or untenable situations. It is a way of—in the midst of brutal reality–intentionally choosing beauty instead of unkindness, life instead of death, seeing instead of turning away, and hope instead of despair.
It is also constructive: using the skills of our craft instead of just flailing (which has its place, but isn’t always sustainable or constructive). The discipline of our art forms harnesses our rage to power our creativity.
The practice of watercolor, of thinking through the blank spaces you need to protect and carefully covering them for later feels…metaphorical? I think all of us must be thoughtful about protecting blank space for ourselves in hard times. Every art form leans on blank spaces—line and stanza breaks, the stillness of a dancer, the quarter rest of a singer. Stillness, emptiness and quiet are essential parts of beauty.
Creative disciplines teach us, quite practically, how to survive horror.
It’s a comfort to look back and seeing how I used art and poetry to process some terrible times.
4. How would you describe the role of illustration and poetry in your spiritual and faith journey?
I think this practice helps me counteract my usual desire to achieve and prove my worth.
Currently, my art-making is pretty private. I have not tried to “go pro” or even be very systematic in growing my skills. Most of my artwork stays in my bullet journals, and I’m the only person that knows it’s there.
This is in contrast to much of the rest of my life, where I’ve always been driven, goal-oriented, ambitious. Sometimes this means stretching myself joyfully…but often, it means putting a lot of pressure on myself to achieve.
Similarly, I love reading, particularly non-fiction…and I often do so to acquire knowledge or grow. Sometimes, that orientation blesses me…and sometimes it’s just another ambition that’s not terribly healthy.
I kind of love that my bullet journal is filled with beautiful poems, quotes and art that are just for me. They’re just there because I like them, and like making them. They don’t serve a purpose other than for pleasure and quiet practice. I love that I’m making a beautiful record of my ordinary days and life and thoughts. I’m honoring them just because. The honoring is in the trying, not the achievement.
Cultivating this kind of quiet, everyday beauty is a deep spiritual practice. I think the Creator of dandelions and sea horses is a fan of making things pretty just because.
5. What advice would you offer to someone who is also interested in illustrating and/or hand lettering poems?
I think a lot of us learn to judge our art harshly, or think that art-making is only for professionals, must take a lot of time, or turn out well. But I smile looking at my first illustrated poem even though I remember being annoyed at how poorly I felt I’d executed it—it was not what I meant it to look like at all. I’ve improved a lot since then, but oh my goodness—there’s something magical in trying something for the first time. I am tremendously grateful for the version of me that decided my middling art skills were good enough to use, even if they didn’t feel like much.
I think a long-term artistic practice also needs to be flexible and realistic. Of late, my drawings and illustrations (and my Bullet Journals overall) have gotten much, much simpler. I miss some of the elaborate layouts I used to do…but I would have abandoned the practice if I hadn’t simplified it. I am still cultivating beauty because I was able to let go of a fixed idea of what the end product should look like. Now I’m making more abstract art and gesture drawings (rapid sketches I often do without looking at the paper, or worrying about accuracy) than more finished drawings, because they are less time-consuming or results- oriented.
These quicker art practices often feel more vulnerable, since they’re not polished, and I exercise less control over them. Sometimes, I sigh when they look like a mess. But they also can be delightfully surprising, since sometimes what emerges is really visually interesting or fun. It’s a very small-stakes art lottery.
Connecting to these quick art projects helps me remember that sometimes, beauty emerges without effort or skill. Often, beauty shows up unexpectedly.
Thank you for your thoughts and time, Heather!
Heather Caliri is the author of Ordinary Creativity: How to Survive with Joy. She’s a writer, artist and editor whose work has appeared in Christianity Today, The Other Journal, Fathom Magazine, Image Journal, In Touch Magazine, and Geez Magazine. As a child, she was scouted for Broadway, called Kenny Rogers a liar to his face, and performed with the San Francisco Ballet. As an adult, she’s closely observed the ups and downs of creative lives, given that her immediate family and closest friends include an Emmy winner, a Grammy winner, a New York Times bestselling author, a painter, several textile artists, a woodworker, and a creative software entrepreneur. Her Creative Personality Test helps everyone see how–not whether–they’re creative. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two daughters.