Update on The Summer Book Project

In the second half of 2020 I started a book-long erasure poetry and collage project: The Summer Book project.

I have been mining Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book for poetic lines that express the isolation of living with a bewildering chronic illness and the struggle to keep a sense of purpose. This came about after reading a line in the introduction about how “an island can be dreadful for someone from the outside” and how it “has no need of you”. I just couldn’t decide if I’m the person the island has no need of or if I’m the island.

Progress has been slow, because I’m constantly distracted by a million things. Then there was some growth.

I wrote a post a while back “Where to go from here“. I talk about how I realised that this victim narrative was keeping me trapped in my discomfort. So now I’m making a conscious effort to draw out the positive instead of the negative.

I’d like to share some of these newer erasure works with you today 😊

You can also follow my progress on my Instagram page.


Something lovely walked on music, and everywhere was a drawing full of gold.
The minutes poured into her hand and opened up the night.
Follow me. We’re safe on this island.
Calm hours have smooth spines, as sleek and pale as the sea of summer.
A crack turned into a canyon of peace and quiet.

12 thoughts on “Update on The Summer Book Project

  1. These erasure works are beautiful Conny! Loved the artwork, and the lovely lines! I particularly liked, ‘Calm hours have smooth spines, as sleek and pale as the sea of summer.’ Best wishes for drawing out the positive in you, and your Summer Book Project!

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s