The School of Fiends

Artist Statement

“The School of Fiends” is one of a series of visual poems I call Vaiku, or visual haiku, not strictly syllabic but Western haiku, to use Kerouac’s term, brief illuminations rendered in the haiku spirit. They capture various moods or tones, at times playful and whimsical, at other times exploring deeper themes but always attempting to be in tune with the haiku’s sense of the heightened moment. As with this piece, my visual poetry is drawn from public domain materials with hand-painted and/or hand-drawn elements. The quote “Waste not thy hour” appearing on the entablature of the brick building on the right is from Omar Khayyam.

Born in an island archipelago, ithacan now resides somewhere north of El Paso. ithacan’s published work includes visual prose and poetry, most recently in Poemeleon.