This is a poetry cover design for McGill-Queen’s University Press, as part of their Hugh Maclennan Poetry Series. There was a line in the brief for this project that was the initial impetus for the first series of sketches: “The collection frequently uses nature as an artery to transport the reader on a metaphoric river through a landscape of emotions. Whatever the feeling, whatever the season, the poems are full of water: rain, river, lake, gulf, ocean.” I am sure I am not the only cover designer who has a relatively extensive collection of rejected cover designs. I refer to them as my “salon des refusés”. This cover design took its starting point from an unused poetry cover sketch I had done a while back - The Stream Exposed with All its Stones for Véhicule Press. Both titles feature streams or rivers. For that earlier cover I was intrigued by having veins in an arm be a visual metaphor for a river. I felt this could be an opportunity to explore the idea further.