What Blooms in the Dark
Cover Design | Interior Design & Layout | Art Direction | client: Molly Bolton
THE PROJECT: Molly Bolton won the 2024 Poets Corner chapbook competition and part of what she won was having her chapbook designed. . . by me. This collection of poetry is both delicate and unyielding, centering on themes of grief and renewal, and I wanted the cover to reflect what indeed blooms in the dark: hope and healing.
Molly and I talked many times before I began designing, and in the end, we chose a cover that featured a photo I took a few years ago of japanese anemones at night. The photo was taken during a time of deep reflection and a long bout of insomnia after a personal loss of my own. Grief. It can be one of the most difficult things to face, and it has so many gifts for us.
With keen sensitivity and honed skill, Liz worked with me to create a book design that reflected the heart of my book. Taking time to understand my vision, she used her experienced artistry to bring it to life. She was a delight to work with and I am proud to have a poetry book that is so lovely!
–Molly Bolton | Poet. Reverend.
The contest was judged by poet Marie Howe who said this about the collection: All the world at once is what is held in the lines of these poems: the birthers, the babies who will not live, the faces of flowers, the stones, the salamanders, the trees, the saints, the living woman who sings these sentences into a rigorous music of what it is to be alive: and from it comes poetry that will plead and mourn and hunger and bless. I returned again and again to these poems and was nourished.”
—Marie Howe | Poet
