Annette Dauphin Simon, SPINE POEMS: An Eclectic Collection of Found Verse for Book Lovers
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
[0:18]their book, their life, and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,
[0:28]bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors and that is what we're going to do.
[0:43]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Zcast podcast network.
[0:48]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Annette Dofan Simon is the author of spine poems and eclectic collection of found verse for book lovers.
[1:03]Before Annette became an author and illustrator, she was an award-winning advertising creative director, which we spoke about.
[1:09]She first found spine poetry or spine poetry found her as a bookseller in an independent bookshop, proud parent of two lovely grown humans,
[1:17]and one who lives yet in her heart, Annette's at home in Southport, North Carolina, and any place with a book.
[1:23]Annette, thank you so much for coming on momstone have time to read books to discuss spine poems and eclectic collection of found verse.
[1:30]Thank you for having me.
[1:32]I am obsessed with this book, this cover, this idea, the creativity.
[1:36]It's just the coolest thing.
[1:38]So for listeners who can't see what I'm holding, can you explain a little bit about your book and how you thought of this whole concept?
[1:47]A spine poem is when you stack books on top of each other, one on top of each other so that when you read the poems from top to bottom, it will read the titles, it tells a poem, or a poem ish.
[2:00]I'm not exactly sure that they can all be called poetry.
[2:03]But I got the idea originally I was a bookseller in a lovely little independent bookstore in Florida, which book star.
[2:11]The book mark.
[2:12]Okay.
[2:13]In Neptune Beach, Florida, they're fabulous.
[2:15]Shout out to all them.
[2:17]They're great.
[2:18]Anyway, so it was a Sunday afternoon and typically our Sundays are not the busiest times.
[2:23]And this was a rainy day and I had another colleague and I were the only two there.
[2:28]And we had a rush, like we weren't expected, but it's fun.
[2:32]It's always fun.
[2:33]People come in and talk about books, you help them.
[2:35]And when it finally ended, we turned around and there were just books everywhere.
[2:40]We were punchy.
[2:43]No, and we started laughing because we noticed like the picture books mixed with cookbooks and histories with mysteries.
[2:49]And, and there are titles said things.
[2:52]As we read them top to bottom, we thought, well, this is just funny.
[2:55]So not to be outdone by coincidence.
[2:58]We made our own arrangements.
[3:00]And that's where it started.
[3:01]But I did come to find out later that I mean, we thought we made a game, right.
[3:06]And we called it founders because we found these titles together.
[3:10]But found poetry is a real thing.
[3:13]And it has roots that go back at least as far as dataism and surrealism art movements.
[3:19]So it's fun.
[3:20]It's just been fun.
[3:21]Well, it's one thing to joke around with the stack of books that you put together late at night.
[3:26]And it's quite another to turn it into this book, which is A, gorgeous.
[3:31]And B, really gorgeous.
[3:34]I don't even know what the B was.
[3:35]It's just really gorgeous.
[3:36]And it's not like, you know, it feels very official.
[3:39]I mean, it's beautiful.
[3:40]And it's not too big.
[3:41]It's not like coffee table size, but it could be a coffee table book.
[3:44]And it's horizontally oriented with spines like going across.
[3:49]So what happened from that night to this book that I'm holding down?
[3:53]Well, a whole lot of nothing in between except I would, I would make spines homes wherever I went.
[3:58]like in libraries or bookstores are just waiting in a restaurant.
[4:01]Sometimes they have in hotel lobbies.
[4:03]We're in Seattle visiting our daughter.
[4:05]And they have, you know, books as decoration as style.
[4:08]And I of course start to play.
[4:10]So that happened.
[4:11]But when it really in the book began during the pandemic,
[4:15]when I was just kind of looking around at my bookshelves.
[4:18]And my oldest son, who's now 33, which is amazing, is,
[4:23]you know, mom, he has encouraged me for a long time to do this.
[4:26]Because I think, I think you ought to do this.
[4:28]So it's like, maybe.
[4:30]And I have a wonderful agent Brenda Bowen.
[4:32]And she's fabulous.
[4:33]And she said, do you have fun with this?
[4:34]Why don't you try this?
[4:35]And so I did.
[4:36]And then we had the team at Harper Design was just amazing from designers.
[4:40]Everybody there.
[4:41]So I have to shout out to them.
[4:42]Oh my gosh.
[4:43]Well, just to pick a few of these wonderful poems.
[4:47]And I love because somebody's books I've had on my podcast.
[4:50]So I love seeing Eric Thomas' book here for it and everything.
[4:52]Right.
[4:53]Right.
[4:54]So it says, pretending here for it to tell you the truth.
[4:57]Sometimes I lie.
[4:59]I love that.
[5:00]That's the opening tube of fiction section.
[5:02]Yeah.
[5:03]I decided to organize it like a bookstore.
[5:05]So you can dip in and out of sections as you like.
[5:08]You know.
[5:09]Yes.
[5:10]And you have.
[5:11]You start with fibleophile.
[5:12]You're a badass.
[5:13]I wrote this for you, which is perfect.
[5:15]Yeah.
[5:16]So your table of contents has fiction, poetry, nonfiction,
[5:18]parenting, philosophy, here.
[5:20]Let's flip to parenting.
[5:21]This is for talking about our kids.
[5:23]It's a beautiful.
[5:24]Say what you will, children make terrible pets.
[5:27]This is so great.
[5:28]It's just so cool.
[5:29]You are here.
[5:30]Home at last.
[5:31]Our story begins.
[5:32]I'm not going to read this whole book.
[5:33]I promise.
[5:34]But it's so cool.
[5:35]While you were napping, the berry or sandwich.
[5:37]It wasn't me.
[5:38]Dragons love tacos.
[5:40]So cool.
[5:41]OK.
[5:42]Anyway, how did you did they take all these books?
[5:45]OK.
[5:46]The photography piece of it.
[5:47]How did that happen?
[5:48]Did they take these books from like where do the books come from?
[5:52]books, photographic.
[5:53]But maybe it's not how I did it.
[5:55]But it is.
[5:56]Right?
[5:57]I took all the photos.
[5:58]Who took all the photos?
[5:59]Who took all the photos?
[6:00]Oh my gosh.
[6:01]Yeah.
[6:02]Well, explain that in a second.
[6:04]But when I offered the idea of submitted the idea to see if anybody would actually want to publish this,
[6:10]I had probably 200 poems, various things.
[6:13]And of course we went through them.
[6:15]And it's more better than others than all.
[6:17]Great.
[6:18]And that led to the division of the book by sections.
[6:21]Yeah, my farms wrapped around it.
[6:23]And so once they got the buy off on 100 poems, more or less.
[6:28]So I was like, OK.
[6:29]So that's slice.
[6:30]That's cutting a lot.
[6:32]And then once they were all approved, then I would get the books wherever I could find them.
[6:37]The library.
[6:38]Little free library is my own shelves.
[6:41]I borrowed books.
[6:42]You know, I bought more books.
[6:44]Like my husband's like, what are you doing?
[6:47]But he actually was really great.
[6:49]As far as photographing them, because I thought originally I was going to do it on my phone.
[6:55]And my editor at the time said, no, no, no, no.
[6:58]This has got to be like real legit.
[7:00]So I bought a camera.
[7:01]And a tripod.
[7:02]And I'm realizing, because I had a career in advertising before I thought there's a reason why photographers are young or have young assistants because I've been shaking.
[7:10]Oh, no.
[7:11]And I thought like, can I focus?
[7:14]I'm not sure I can see this.
[7:16]So my husband found a little like two second delay.
[7:19]So I use that on every single shot.
[7:21]I have this big table in my little studio area.
[7:24]And my husband pulled one of those like plastic shelving units from the garage.
[7:30]We put it upside down on the table.
[7:32]And then we made a backdrop of leftover.
[7:35]We had just done like a like a vapor lock in an old house, 100 year old house.
[7:40]And so it's not even a basement.
[7:42]It's like ground between the ground and the first floor.
[7:45]We had left over a piece of that.
[7:46]So I turned it up one side is black.
[7:48]And the other side is like gray.
[7:50]So we duct taped that to the upside down plastic shelving.
[7:55]Oh, my gosh.
[7:56]For long.
[7:58]Wow.
[7:59]Well, it looks incredibly professional and amazing.
[8:03]I'm so impressed.
[8:04]Tell me about advertising and what you were doing there.
[8:07]And then your other books that came out like winded all of this happened chronologically.
[8:11]And everything.
[8:13]Chronologically, I went to school for graphic design, University of Cincinnati fabulous school.
[8:18]And then got a job.
[8:19]I always liked playing with words and pictures.
[8:21]So I was working in advertising and design, which is a natural fit.
[8:24]And I worked at agencies really stellar places or a number of years.
[8:29]And then our family got an opportunity to to move.
[8:33]And so I gave a agency live and and we moved to Florida.
[8:37]And that's when I took that part time job at the bookmark.
[8:40]And I'd also been playing in the meantime with my own writing and illustrating picture books.
[8:45]So one thing led to another.
[8:47]And then like this was just really something I found.
[8:50]You know, while we were playing at the bookstore.
[8:53]So that's it.
[8:54]Wow.
[8:55]I worked in advertising for a little bit.
[8:57]Also, I worked at them.
[8:58]Go go be in me there and you're going to be him.
[9:00]Where did you work?
[9:01]And what role did you have there?
[9:03]Like what were you doing?
[9:04]Oh, I was an art director and then became the creative director.
[9:06]Yeah.
[9:07]Wow.
[9:08]That's so great.
[9:09]Started at the time.
[9:10]They called it finished artists.
[9:11]Like we were the people.
[9:12]And I go way back.
[9:13]We we cut type.
[9:15]We send it to the type center and with an exacto.
[9:18]I mean, I could be a search.
[9:19]Oh, my God.
[9:20]Paper.
[9:21]To.
[9:22]Roberson.
[9:23]I mean, it's it's literally archaic.
[9:25]You know, no.
[9:26]But it taught you it's like to see spaces between letters and all that kind of stuff.
[9:31]Where there campaigns that you worked on that you're like really proud of even now.
[9:34]Well, like my first TV campaign was for Royal Caribbean cruise lines.
[9:40]And this was a really, really long time ago.
[9:42]And they were basically we had not a lot of money.
[9:45]So we found stock footage of their ships.
[9:48]And we put that to music and we just had lines.
[9:52]I mean, they were super over the thing.
[9:54]And that was really fun.
[9:55]I was when I was like, oh, I can do this.
[9:57]And then it's adding the music, which is another.
[9:59]Okay.
[10:00]fun element to the words and pictures. Amazing. And then the children's books. Tell me
[10:05]more about this. So this is kind of interesting because I listened to, you
[10:09]had guests last week who did the picture book about the garden. Oh, Sheila
[10:13]heading. Yep. We had a daughter who's three and a half years old when she died.
[10:18]She was born with a severe rare disorder. And you know, so this is when I was
[10:23]working at the agency in Raleigh, North Carolina. So my, our then five-year-old son,
[10:28]she died two days before he turned five. So the family was all coming down. We had
[10:32]my parents picked up a ninja, you know, birthday cake. So we did that. So then for the,
[10:37]over the next year, he would, he would say things to me. And I write him down,
[10:42]but to call it a diary gives it way too much discipline. Like I would just write
[10:45]things down over the course of the year. And usually he wanted to talk at that time,
[10:48]you know, while we were reading a book and stuff. So when we moved to Austin,
[10:54]in the meantime, I'd started this book with him. And I said,
[10:57]are you sure you want to do this? Because the people at the hospice were saying,
[11:01]you need to get this out because there wasn't really anything for kids. You know,
[11:05]the fall of Freddie, the leaf. Sorry, I apologize to anybody who loves that. It's great. But when
[11:10]when your five-year-old son puts his hand over the book and goes, what does a tree you have to do
[11:14]with my sister? And I love Judith Vierst, but the 10th good thing about Barney is that she's
[11:19]helping flowers grow. It didn't help us. So it's just, it's very loose. And it's really his
[11:25]thoughts and questions. And it was over the course of the year. So literally from the day he
[11:31]turned five, so he was six, put it away for a couple of years, brought it back out. And I said,
[11:35]are you sure you want to do this? And he's like, absolutely, we need to do this mom.
[11:39]This is the same one who encouraged me with spine poems. So we did. And it's Jack's words,
[11:45]everywhere it is, his, it's called, it's a very long title. And it's since out of print,
[11:49]but you can probably find one for 50 cents on blind. But it's called, this book is for all kids,
[11:55]but especially my sister Libby, Libby died. So that was the first book that I illustrated. And I
[12:01]had no idea, because I wanted to play with children's books my whole life. Had no clue that that
[12:07]would be the first one, but it really, it's still used in hospices and groups across country.
[12:13]So that's pretty cool. So after that, but it was fun. And I just have very simple colors in it.
[12:19]And I'll tell you, so this is how old I am. I drew in this program called Quark Express,
[12:24]which I remember. I don't even exist anymore. I still write in it too. But it's a predecessor
[12:31]to a in design or whatever. So I'm using very simple shapes by design, literally, because I'm coloring
[12:39]in photo boxes and text boxes. And there was one page and it's where Jack says he's talking about,
[12:45]you know, on earth, your body is like your master. And when you die, you're set free. And he said,
[12:50]this has to be a genie lamp. And I hung heck, do I draw a genie lamp like this? But I did. And
[12:55]just overlapped circles and shapes and stuff. So that was the first one. And he was, you know,
[13:01]even despite a career in advertising, he was one tough little client. Probably at the toughest,
[13:07]actually. And after that, I had one called Mocking Birdies published. And then
[13:13]two by Candlewick, Robot Zombie Frankenstein and Robot Burped Smarty Pants. And we'll see,
[13:18]I'm still playing with picture books. So we'll see what comes next.
[13:21]I am so sorry about your daughter. And that is a beautiful story and way to take the hard break
[13:29]and help him through that too. Yeah, I know. Sorry. It's just hard. No, don't why are you sorry?
[13:36]No, I feel terrible. Anyway, this is life. It's okay. I mean, this is everybody gets dealt their
[13:46]hand for whatever reason. And it's just terrible to hear knowing how much pain it must be
[13:53]involved still and always has been and all of that. So I'm just my heart goes out to you.
[13:58]Oh, thank you. No, it's, I rarely start at the conversation. We're just meeting somebody and
[14:04]saying, hey, you know, so I just spilled it to you. But you know, we all have our kids are
[14:10]amazing and they're all different. As you know, like that they just come through us. And
[14:15]and I swear they're born with the personalities that they have. And, you know, our youngest is the most
[14:21]stubborn in the world, but it has served her well. So how old my daughter, June is 28. Okay,
[14:30]now I am completely convinced that parenting has like little today. It's almost like just do
[14:36]no harm type of thing. Like they're they're born through that. And it's just, I just have to keep
[14:40]them, you know, on the straight narrow and, you know, teach them right from wrong and everything
[14:46]else is sort of overblown sense of influence or I think I don't know. Maybe I'm simplifying it,
[14:51]but I totally agree with you as all I'm saying. I read something when I was, you know, going through
[14:56]the throws with our daughter Libby. And it just said, we are all here to tend to the lilies in the field.
[15:02]We do the best we can. Yes. It's like, that's perfect. Oh, and it's book,
[15:06]biddly of therapy. I'm telling you, I'm this chair of a believer. Yes. Did it help or how did it
[15:11]feel actually being a bookseller? I'm opening a bookstore like next month and I know congratulations.
[15:16]I love it. I love it. I mean, there's never enough time to do the actual, the fun part. People think
[15:21]you get to sit and read all day. No, you're doing everything but that and you're reading at night
[15:27]or any spare moment just so you can do that. But it's so fun. You get to meet people, the
[15:31]communities wonderful. Anybody who goes into a bookstore is there because they want to be there.
[15:35]Yep. And it's fun. I mean, yeah, book people are just fabulous all the way around. Everybody,
[15:41]you know, from the represented publishers reps to like everybody, the customers. What is your
[15:47]favorite genre or what types of books do you gravitate to? Like if you had all the time in the world,
[15:51]what would you be reading? I love picture books illustration, but I also, I love literary fiction,
[15:56]I guess. I've always loved reading books, you know, the stories behind them, not just the photos
[16:01]that's fun. I like biographies. My husband's really more of an onfiction guy, I bet. He loves,
[16:08]he can get deep into the history of chess or history of rum or you name it. He's got it. So what have
[16:17]you done with your camera since this project? I can't imagine you just like shoved it in a drawer.
[16:22]Well, that's where it is right now, but it's gonna come out again. I'm working, playing with
[16:27]a version for kids. Awesome. That's really great. So I think it'd be fun. Using all just titles that are
[16:33]only kid appropriate, you know, that's really cool. I think from board books up to, you know,
[16:39]I'm trying to do it just between the ages of really like eight to 10 or 12, you know,
[16:46]and it starts like middle, middle school starts to get. There's just a big development gap there.
[16:52]Yeah. Well, it's so creative and so cool. Do you have plans for related merch and things like that,
[17:00]like mugs and toads and I did that for Christmas. I made some mugs. I did and coasters made and
[17:08]also for the booksellers when the book was launched. I gave them, you know, little magnets and
[17:16]stuff. So we'll see. I mean, they seem to really like it, but nothing definite yet.
[17:20]That would be really cool to do coasters related to drinking or parties. You know, I would buy those.
[17:27]So that would be sick. I mean, can you do different colors, different colorways,
[17:31]different great components? They're fun. It's just, you know,
[17:36]oh my gosh. Books are amazing to me. Like everything about them. The colors, I like to
[17:40]picture books. I like to take off the jackets and see what's under me, you know. Yep. And pages,
[17:47]it's just all. I completely agree. There's so much there. Oh my gosh. And just to finish
[17:54]one last word, mic drop. Then your book ends. It's so perfect. Thank you. Anyway,
[17:59]thank you for talking to me today. I love this book. I'm so impressed. I love hearing the back story
[18:05]and verse for book lovers. So great. So thank you. And thank you for sharing your
[18:09]book. My pleasure. Thank you for having your loss and all of that. I'm really, you know,
[18:13]I'm just so sorry. It's been a treat to talk with you. Thank you. Thank you too. I will have a great day.
[18:19]Thank you. Take care. Okay. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[18:25]to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebiowans and at Moms Don't Have Time
[18:30]to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[18:36]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[18:41]for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[18:45]fantastic intro and out trim music.