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Wednesdays in Review: Why Birds and Wolves Don't Trade Stones

Let’s get this out of the way right now: Lishai Peel is one of the most humble, fascinating, nice, inspiring people you will ever meet and we here at words(on)pages adore her. So it is hard to remain unbiased when it comes to reviewing her debut book, Why Birds and Wolves Don't Trade Stones that combines poetry and panels to create something unique and beautiful.

That all said, when you’re reading this book, you are not privy to Lishai’s awesome mish-mash accent and her commanding presence on a microphone. You’re only left with her words. And her words are powerful.

One of the most arresting things about spoken word poetry is its immediacy—its ability to grab you by the throat and refuse to let you go until both you and the poet on the stage are spent. This is a bit of a double-edged poetry sword, though, because often times you as a listener are so enraptured by the immediacy of spoken word poetry that you may miss out on some pretty complex, brilliant stuff. In a way, a spoken word artist can shoot themselves in the proverbial foot through performance—they can do their words a disservice by barreling through their poems at a breakneck pace.

But by binding her work in a book and presenting it to the reader as a bit more of conventional page poetry, Lishai invites the reader to steep themselves within her words and take it all in—and this leaves Lishai vulnerable to a critical eye that the immediacy of spoken word, performative poetry may not alone.

Here’s the thing, though: it works.

And let’s not forget about the panel portion of this book. Framing Lishai’s words is the artwork of David Brame, known as “Amazing David” in the comic world. We do not pretend to know the intricacies of comic book art here at words(on)pages, but we definitely know that this book looks awesome—like Lishai’s words, the art is immediately striking and it draws the reader in with exaggerated lines and swirls of every colour imaginable. Brame dabbles with a lot of imagery to match the tone of Lishai’s words whilst adhering to a style all his own. In anyone else’s hands, there would be a risk of the work being confusing and confused, but Brame knows when to rein things in and when to let his images run wild. The book is a whirlwind of colours and words and whomever laid it out paid close attention to how each page was framed. Words and images bleed and blend into one another without ever being hard to read and font choices all just feel right for the tone of each poem. It is simply beautiful to look at.

Lishai and David essentially self-published this book together in 2013, with Graphic Poetics Press, and have re-released the book in a beautiful hardcover edition since the first paperback print run. (Yes, that is backwards from the usual process, probably because it’s terribly expensive to invest in publishing a hardcover book first.) Everything about it, from the vivid colours to the paper quality to the layout and front and back matter, screams quality, and it seems like the result of so much more than a two-person project. In some places there are a few typos, maybe an error in typesetting or maybe the result of a forgone final proofread, but these don’t have any impact on the reading experience.

This publication reminds us of the illustrated version of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (which you ought to pick up if you haven’t, because it’s awesome). It is a unique, arresting piece of work that grows on you the more you read it. You are floored at first by its appearance, just as you are floored by Lishai’s presence on a microphone. And then you spend a while with it and you appreciate just how talented Lishai and David are.

We also sincerely hope that this book is a prompt for other spoken word artists to experiment with the medium of books, and for more traditional page poets to experiment with the medium of comics to present their work. Books really allows readers to absorb your work and really appreciate it.

Seriously, go support Lishai and David and buy this book.