the poet's zodiac

Throughout the majority of this year, I have been working steadily on a series called the poets zodiac.  It was conceived as simply a book-artish project involving those supermarket zodiac scrolls, but soon, there were some accompanying images, and now I'm wondering if they might, in fact, be an entire book.  By the end, there will be 48 of them, plus illustrations if I can find a publisher willing to do both. Initially I planned to do a full round every month, but realized it might be a bit over ambitious.

I created a bunch of scrolls back in May right before the Chicago Zine Fest, and have been distributing them in random ways ever since.  I will be doing another round this winter, and plan to get a little more fancy in my paper.  I've also been posting them on the regular over on my instagram hoping to drum up some enthusiasm.

I am far from anything like a horoscope expert..I've always loved the details of the signs though.  And, with the exception of the Meyers-Briggs inventory which is always dead on, I do feel they somehow inexplicably capture personalities on the nose. There is talk that babies are subject to the seasons they are born in, and it make have more to do with science and weather than the strange pull of the stars, but it's a nice idea. I am so very Taurus it still sometimes surprises me...in fact everyone I encounter who is a Taurus, I probably would have guessed they were without even knowing their birthday.  I don't always nail it on other signs --I'm decent at spotting Aries and Libras--my mom and my sister being my real life examples, but my Dad is a Virgo, and given other Virgos I've met, doesn't seem like it.  My boyfriend and my best friend are both Leos (and actually share the same birthday, I sometimes see traits of the sign in both, but not the same ones.) So who knows, maybe I'm looking to hard and it's all bunk, but it's fun to think about it. 

As for these poems, they take a little bit of the general traits of the zodiac and flesh them out a bit into advice and predictions. They are serious fun to write, and I would love to finish the whole round of them by the end of the year (though swallow is shiny and new and pulling me in another direction.)  I use them sort of like exercises to loosen up the poems sometimes when I'n not sure what to write.

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