"Like, what's with these recent poetry posts out of no where, Denis? I thought you drew funny things! I don't see jokes in these poems!" I know right? I'm sure these recent posts have seemed completely out of character for me. Especially when you consider I haven't explicitly expressed any interest in any sort of poetry writing in the past 5 or so years I've been making comics. Or have I?
por·tend \por-TEND\
verb
To indicate (events, misfortunes, etc.) as in future; to foreshadow; to bode.
I certainly have a love for words, not only in learning new ones, but figuring out how to use them in creative or even humorous ways. Words of interest, for example, was a bit of an exploration in this idea for me. I wanted to expand my vocabulary but at the same time, hopefully, be able to expand other people's as well. You don't know how much it's made my day when people have come up to me at shows and told me they've started using a word from the comic in their daily language and/or jokes! But, before I go on some nonsense tangent about humorous verbal lols, let's stay on point and talk about writing, shall we?
Before any of this all started I used to write, not only poems, but lyrics to songs that I would sing along to while I played piano or guitar. In high school, my dream was to become a professional musician who was able to travel around the country to be able share music anywhere I could. This was before social media was as big as it now, by the way. I think back then the best site available to me for promotion was Myspace... you know, that site where the only thing anyone cared about was who showed up in their "top 5" on their profiles. Anyway, I made it a practice to write poetry every night before bed or even while I was supposed to be learning how to cram numbers together in Science class (I obviously learned quite a bit about how to Math those days). Every so often, the poems that didn't sound like verbal fecal matter became songs and chicken scribbles that didn't make the cut were thrown into a poem pile where lesser poems just went to die.
Anyway, when I started drawing L.A.W.L.S. it was something that began to consume my life completely. So much so, that I had to make a creative decision. Which thing was most important to me and which seemed to be the most feasible of jobs? At the time, the answer was comics. I needed to focus on one creative project, not 100... because I feared that I would never perfect how to draw comics if I was splitting my attentions between both things. Sound enough logic, but the only fault in it was that I was beginning to let a creative part of myself begin to die. I certainly enjoy making people laugh, but I wasn't writing things that moved me anymore. As I've more recently come this realization, I've come to the conclusion that I should be creating things that not only inspire other people, but myself as well.