My Iron Spine cover

So this is the draft of my cover for My Iron Spine, my second collection of poetry. It will probably change a bit - we've been talking about changing the typeface - but I'm pretty happy with it. I wanted something very red. Red, blood, flesh and lipstick all feature often in the poems in the collection. Also red is a very vibrant colour, and my hope of course is that it will attract poetry people like flowers attract bees. And yes, as has also been noted by several of the people I showed my various cover ideas and versions to, it will match my wardrobe (I pretty much only wear read and black).

I decided I'd go with a corset on the cover because a) I think they're cool, b) many of the women who feature in the biographical poems in My Iron Spine lived during times when corsets were common, c) a major theme in the collection is constriction and suffocation and such like versus comfort and strength, often coming from the same thing, d) I went to the trouble of painting it.