How "Corvus" Was Made

When I started writing haiku and short-form poetry, I found my experiences with crows and ravens to nest perfectly in the comfort of the form’s sparsity. Their black starkness against almost any backdrop imbued the space around them with a sort of yin-yang mystical quality.

After years of creating a body of Corvid poems, I started using photographs to perfectly manipulate them into woodblock-style images. This process began to draw the pieces of this project together. You can see that some of my images incorporate as many as five different photographs carefully collaged into an image that supports the poetry, which stands comfortably on the page with ample margins.

The final project in InDesign incorporates a body font and a poem title font, as well as the cover and title page all together in a perfectly assembled package. My design was most inspired by the tiny hardcover book "Sacred Geometry" by Miranda Lundy. Also a square book about 6" X 6" with the most amazing macro-typography design.

"Corvus" has matte laminate 100 lb paper to nicely hold the woodblock-style images, a Smyth-sewn binding, and a black fabric marker, for a short-run printing of only 100.