Senior Mariel Lansangan, a poetry student in English teacher Maral Guarino’s Modern Poetry class, worked with sophomore Enrique Vazquez, one of Eric Kursinski’s design students, last week on an assignment where poets collaborated with design students to transform poetry into the visual arts.

“On the first day of the project he read my poem and we discussed a few things,” Lansangan said. “We compared our visions for the piece and decided to combine the two ideas.”

Since Modern Poetry is an elective only available for seniors, the poets were able to step out of their grade level and work with design students ranging from all four grades.

The first step of the collaboration was to have the poets write a poem about a memory that they were able to write about in detail. After composing the poem, the design students were assigned one or two poems to illustrate, based off of the poet’s details, visuals, and tone,

Lansangan’s poem was a memory of her holding a Céline bag at Barney’s New York in Beverly Hills. “We both agreed and states the obvious that the best illustration for my poem was a bag,” Lansangan said. “But we had a lot of issues deciding a color scheme.”

Nevertheless, after keeping close contact with each other, and tweaking the design several times, Vazquez was able to illustrate the Céline bag with the perfect color scheme and backdrop that suited Lansangan’s poem. “Overall the project was a new experience for the both of us,” she said. “I was able to strengthen my communication skills and my social skills.”

Senior Olimpia Hostetler, a design student, on the other hand, faced different difficulties from Lansangan and Vazquez. “I really hated using Illustrator,” Hostetler said. “It was difficult for me to use, and I was more comfortable with Photoshop.”

Although using Illustrator was a challenging factor, she took her time and produced several drafts and claimed to have met the vision of her poet, senior Ainsley Dye. “The project gave me a chance to feel like a real designer,” she said. “I had a client and I had to listen to what they wanted and make sure that they liked the design and made any changes needed.”

Hostetler and Lansangan said they both had a lot of fun with the project and would do it again. “I learned that creativity is endless,” Lansangan said. “Poetry and design can connect and create a different perspective on the project as a whole.”