I’ve devoted last couple of weeks to finalising my poetry collection titled Beneath the Surface. Some of these poems are new, some I have carried around in various notebooks and crumpled bits of paper for years, now it’s time for them to to get their well-deserved collection. Today, we’re working on some of the illustrations, and here is a sneak peek of what’s to come in the collection. Enjoy!

The Wait – an excerpt

My time festers
Like a boil on my back where I can’t reach
As I stand on street corners
And count the raindrops
That throw themselves from the rim of my umbrella
Waiting for familiar footsteps
And even more familiar wet kisses and excuses.

The Clock – The Symbolism of Time

Clocks feature an immense role in my writing. Time is my enemy and my ally and its shadow lurks from the corner of every page. Writing has always been my attempt to wield the time, to stop it, or make it go back, to some gilded past.

A Pile of Words and Drawings

Why illustrate poetry? Poems are paintings in words, they don’t need any further clarification, yet I feel the need to include illustrations into this collection since I want to cast a clearer light on people, objects, and places that have moulded me and provided the backdrop for all my writing. Sarajevo, my faraway hometown, is my inescapable setting, and I want you to see it as I do. The clocks are those that once hung from the walls in my old house and ticked and tocked, inexorable, unstoppable. The people are those whose ghosts I still see in the crowds. And the person bringing them to life on paper is one of the people who know me best even when I forget myself.

© 2019 Erna Grcic