I’ve been holed up in my office working, hours upon hours upon hours. It feels like I need a new office chair seat cushion. I’ve drank a lot coffee and eaten a lot of chocolate. I might need new glasses.
But it’s all been worth it, because the thing I’m working on is a labour of love. It is the design and placing of literally hundreds of poems and photos in InDesign. It is the reading, verifying and measuring of the shape, size, colour and feel of all those poems and photos. It is soul-wrenching, tear-inducing and gaze-out-the-window-thinking work.
It is I Wrote This For You.
Ten years ago, Iain Thomas and Jon Ellis started a blog where poems and photography were paired and published anonymously. Since then, it’s become something larger than life. I could spout on about how successful and far-reaching their project has become, but none of that really matters. What does matter is the root of the project, a multi-faceted honest expression of humanity. And — while hundreds of thousands of books have been sold, you don’t have to spend any money on it, all the poetry and photos are available for free at iwrotethisforyou.me.
In November, we will celebrate ten years of the project by releasing the most ambitious book the three of us have ever worked on, a beautiful collector’s edition of the celebrated poetry and photography of these two talented individuals.
I’d like to show you a little bit of what we’ve been working on, mainly because I’m really proud of where it’s going and to help celebrate the half-way mark of National Poetry Month.
We hope you’ll like it, because all this is truly done for you.
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