Poem in My Pocket

This lilting allegory explores the many ways that words can become poetry. Scribbles tumble from a girl’s pocket, falling all around her on the ground. They swirl in the wind, letters rearranging, forming accidental puns. (“No Prob Llama!” “Donut worry. Be Happy!”) She tries to gather up her thoughts to recreate her original verse, but to no avail. Then a storm rolls in, melting her words into the ground, and eventually producing a Poet-Tree.

Tougas’s fanciful look at the process of creative writing features rhyming verses that make use of internal and external assonances and letters rearranged to create words with new meanings. Bisaillon’s digital art makes use of a collage style and skillfully depicts the blowing wind and rain that make this extended metaphor work. Employing a spring palette of greens, browns, and yellows, and accented in reds, Bisaillon’s full-bleed art appears somewhat cluttered with words and images, well-suited to a story plumbing the messiness of creativity.

Attractive and thought-provoking, Poem in My Pocket will be welcomed as a source of inspiration for would-be poets.