The Story Behind The Book / 3
Pencils And Zinfandel
As ‘The Moon Carrier’ slowly took shape, I knew I wanted illustrations to go with some of the poems. This meant searching for a suitable illustrator. I searched, but I did not find. This went on for some time.
Then I got lucky.
In 2012, entirely by chance, I met Francesca DeWinter. Our meeting had nothing to do with poetry or illustration, but Francesca happened to mention that she did a bit of illustration here and there. She showed me some of her work, and I immediately knew I had found the right person to work on the book.
My intended subtitle for the book was, ‘One Hundred Poems About Love’, but I only had fifty poems ready. I had four options:
- change the subtitle to, ‘Fifty poems about love’.
- keep the title, put fifty poems in and split them all in half.
- keep the title, put fifty poems in and hope nobody sued me for mis-representation. I felt I could always offer a defence of ‘poetic licence’. After all, if you can’t use this defence about a book of poetry, when can you use it?
- write fifty more poems.
Though sorely tempted by option (3), I decided to crank out fifty more poems. This is what I did, between October and December of 2012. I call these the Mutt poems (making up the total).
Francesca, meanwhile, started creating all the illustrations you see in the book. I was very impressed not only by her talent but also her willingness to tackle surreal concepts such as ‘five dragonflies playing helical chess’. We held regular progress meetings at Brown’s in St. Martin’s Lane, an excellent place to sink gallons of tea while discussing such things as the correct attire for a badger with an interest in astrophysics. We generally rounded off the evenings with plenty of Zinfandel. I am more or less teetotal, but I will do anything for a really good Zinfandel.
So that’s the story of ‘The Moon Carrier’: inspiration from Robert Graves, a romantic adventure in LA, and a chance meeting with a gifted illustrator.
Not many will read ‘The Moon Carrier’. There are bus tickets that have enjoyed a greater readership than ever ‘The Moon Carrier’ will achieve. Nonetheless, it’s something I wanted to do and now I’ve done it. If anyone likes some of it, all to the good. If not, well, I very much doubt the sky will fall in.
— Ian Rowland, July, 2013