Poetry Month-The South Common Haiku Project

I spent a lovely afternoon with haiku by my friend Paul Marion. We are working together on the South Common Haiku Book Project. We first talked about doing something together about thirty years ago when I was deep in lettering and not yet involved in bookmaking and we tossed around occasional ideas in the intervening years. Last year Paul started posting haiku about the South Common in Lowell on facebook and I immediately thought that here was the opportunity we had been waiting for. We met just after Christmas and the plan grew into an event with the official title of the South Common Haiku Book Project: An Earth Day Celebration in Lowell which will take place on Sunday, April 22.

I am hand-lettering Paul's haiku and creating the book design and pages. People who come to the event will bind their own copy of the book using sticks gathered on the Common. The event will begin at 2 PM with a guided tour of the South Common Historic District by Dick Howe, Jr. and then move into the EN Rogers School to learn about and see design drawings for the City of Lowell's planned improvements at the Common with Allegra Williams, hear music by Joseph Darensbourg, and bind books and enjoy Paul's haiku.

Please join us on April 22nd. RSVPs (you can leave a comment or send an email) are helpful but feel free to come whether you respond or not.

Here are a few of the haiku up close. I want to use my lettering as is with no doctoring in photoshop so I have written some of the poems more than once or repeated lines. It will be reduced to fit the book's pages.

And here's a link to last year's Poetry Month post about Paul's work.