Happy Zine Day - Cris Peacock

I'm posting reviews of the zines I received when I created 10 of my own and traded with 10 other artists. You can see the zine, or small, self-published magazine, that I created, here.

Today I want to tell you about Cris Peacock's zine, called Words & Art Zine: Making Poems. Cris is an artist living in Maui who makes jewelry and other mixed media art.


Her zine is 4 1/2" x 5 1/2" and is spiral-bound. It looks like she painted the pages and maybe did some sun prints of flowers. She sent photos of the pages through PhotoShop, altering them to make her own paper. I counted 20 pages with the covers, but that doesn't give you the full picture. Many pages fold out, fold open, or include pockets. Some pages are cut down, others have deckled edges. I bet she had fun putting this mini-book together.


The opening line for her zine is "Ideas for making simple poems to mix with your Artwork." I'm all about including words and stories in my art, but for some reason, I haven't braved the poetry waters. I don't know why -- I wrote hundreds of poems when I was younger. I think when we get older, we feel less free to express ourselves. I'm definitely expressing myself artistically in many ways; perhaps this little zine will encourage me to try poetry again.

Cris starts with a poem by her favorite poet, followed by a book recommendation. She talks about words -- and did I mention that the text in her zine is all handwritten? She's definitely studied calligraphy. I think words read better that way, especially when they are poems.


Cris describes a few easy poem forms to get you started: haiku, acrostics, then leads to poems with a more complex structure: diamonte, cinquains. She gives an example of each.

Once you've written your poems, you can follow two techniques for presenting them. She describes how to make a plumber's tape repousee' and to make paste paper. She includes examples of each.


And finally, her book ends with a little envelope of goodies. I think that's the unwritten rule of zines: include some goodies. And it makes it so much more fun when you pull them out of an enclosure, like you're opening a present.


You can see more of Cris's art at her website and her blog.