The Illustrated Poetry of Jeff Brain

The Illustrated Poetry of Jeff Brain

My poetry is an organic offshoot of my art, however very recent. I started drawing in a sketch loose style when I covered UC Berkeley Baseball (Bob Melvin was the third-string catcher!) for the Piedmont Times in the ’80s. In 2010, at the urging of the late Bay Area poet, John Oliver Simon, I started adding words to my images in a poetic style. Further influenced by the late San Francisco haiku poet, Tom Tico, and late San Francisco Beat poet, Jack Hirschman, I started to hone my current style which often has haiku at its heart. Scouting Reports, in particular, utilize a haiku style to give deeper insight and interpretation to the players depicted through the “scout’s” poetic point of view. Every image lives first in my sketchbook, scanned and finalized in Photoshop and/or Painter. Words are often part of the original sketchbook image, but I am excising and editing them and adding them back in in a more legible font than my handwriting. These are the first combination image/poems to be published.

Jeff Brain is a retired public school teacher. You can find more of his art on his website or on Instagram.