Every year the Poetry Society runs the Foyle Young Poets competition for poets ages 11-17 anywhere in the world. In normal years, the winning hundred poets would all go to a big celebratory event, but big celebratory events weren’t very possible in 2020.
As an alternative reward, the Poetry Society commissioned me to draw a poster, featuring images from all one hundred winning poems, all growing on a tree (a poet-tree???). Luckily there was lots of evocative imagery to choose from, including animals (peacocks, squids), food (pretzels, watermelons), and all kinds of other stuff (labyrinths, washing lines, thunderstorms).
In order to fit all the images in, I drew and cut out lots of little images and moved them round to make a good overall picture.
But that wasn’t all – the poetry society also asked me to draw the same image on the window of the Poetry Society in Betterton Streeet, Covent Garden. After a practice on my living room window, I set out for London armed with a million Posca pens (special pens for window-writing).
Here are some dramatic action shots of me at work (by photographer Hayley Madden)
And here’s the finished window!
More about the project on the Poetry Society website: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/foyle-young-poets-of-the-year-award/2020-2/foyle-an-artist-responds/