Patrick Arrasmith’s Scratchboarding Secrets Revealed!

Earlier this month, I met Patrick Arrasmith, the illustrator for Joseph Delaney’s The Last Apprentice YA fantasy series, and got him to share some of the techniques behind his atmospheric drawings. It’s a fun video—give it a look!

16 November 2008 | interviews |

Jeffrey Yang, “Xi-Turtle”

Follow the third guideway thru
the Eastern Mountains, pass
the Desert of Shifting Sands to
Tiptoe Peak, bare of plants
and trees but full of jade and giant
snakes, you’ll find Deep Lake
where the sacred Xi-Turtle dwells.
The markings on its shell foretell;
its stomach emanates strange sounds.
Says Master Zhuang: What people
know is inferior to what they do not know.

From An Aquarium. Although this is his first collection of original poems, Yang is the translator of work by the 11th-century Chinese poet Su Shi as well as a collection of other poets in the era of the Tang and Song dynasties. See, for example, nine examples of his translation from Words Without Borders.

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11 November 2008 | poetry |