Artists, poets team up for ‘Sketches and Stanzas’

‘Sketches & Stanzas” is a 48-page paperback book published by poets and artists in teacher James Tilton’s Creative Writing and Publishing class and art teachers Evelyn Rivas’s and Kristin Williams’s classes at Eastside High School.

“I am so impressed by the creativity of these teenage poets and artists and I am so thankful for the teachers who were willing to collaborate on this project,” Tilton wrote in an email. “The end result blew me away. It’s truly wonderful to see the names of our students in print.”

Thanks to funding from Antelope Valley Union High School District’s Career Technical Education Department, every student whose work was featured was able to receive a final copy of the book.

The launching point was Canadian poet and illustrator Rupi Kaur’s work. The students wrote original poems inspired by Kaur’s work. They uploaded the poems onto their personal blogs. Students in Rivas’s and Williams’s art classes then created pen and ink illustrations to accompany their favorite poems.

Tilton selected Kaur’s poetry because it really helps students see that poetry can be approachable and relatable, he wrote in an email.

“I also love the way that she uses artwork to complement the spoken word,” he added. “Her combination of poetry and pen and ink drawings served as the perfect inspiration for

this collaboration.”

“Wallflower,” a poem by student Jazlyn Arenas, opens the book. It is accompanied by an illustration by Adela Cervantes Garcia.

“I was completely ecstatic from hearing about the project,” Arenas wrote in an email. “We’ve written several different things in our creative writing class and one of my favorite topics has been poetry so to hear we would get to publish our poems was really exciting.”

She added that she was inspired by the works of Kaur, whom she admires.

In “Wallflower,” Arenas writes about someone mesmerized by the beauty of a lonely flower swaying in the breeze only to pluck it, twirl its stem and observe its frailty.

“You drop the flower/ to pick at another/ and find it’s just as weak/ as the plucked wallflower/so why do you keep plucking/in the hopes of a perfect flower/when they’re all the same” Arenas wrote.

Cervantes Garcia’s illustration shows a young girl with her hair blowing in the breeze, sitting on a long flower stem with her hand up and petals floating above her.

“I really appreciated her illustration and thought it fit my poem well,” Arenas wrote.

She said it was fun to collaborate with other artists and see how they would view her poem to fit their art style.

“I was very happy and appreciative to have the chance,” Arenas wrote. “I think it’s such a beautiful thing to see your own writing printed on paper. I loved the collaboration with everyone because not only am I going to keep my own work, I get to see the writing of my classmates and appreciate their creativity.”

Student Kailey Lewis wrote a poem titled “Everything Hurts.”

“I was inspired by a break up actually, although I do remember after reading one of Kaur’s poems it mentioned hurting and having this pain that kinda stuck with you,” she wrote.

Artist Jonathan Nasi illustrated Lewis’s poem with a bandaged, cupped hand and broken, bandaged heart floating above it.

When Lewis first heard about the project, she wasn’t sure if her work would be selected for the book.

“I’m very happy that I got published because I never knew I was good at poetry,” she wrote in an email. “I really liked putting my poems in with my peers because everyone was expressing themselves.”

Lewis was pleased with Nasi’s illustration.

“I was amazed,” she wrote. “And I was shocked how good the art piece was!”

Artist Khayden Jeter selected poet Aronde Crowe’s poem “Perfection” to illustrate.

“I chose the poem ‘Perfection’ by Aronde Crowe specifically, because I like how it tells us how everyone is perfectly imperfect,” Jeter wrote, “and that you shouldn’t stress about being ‘perfect.’ In my illustration I wanted to show how you can be imperfect yet still beautiful. I made a shattered jar to show the jar isn’t ‘perfect.’ I drew flowers blooming out of the jar to show that even while not being perfect your still beautiful. When I first heard my drawing would be in the book I was very excited! I was very happy because I really wanted my illustration to perfectly coincide with the poem.”

“Sketches & Stanzas” is available for sale nationwide for $2.91 at www.lulu.com

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