This is a tattoo I designed for my brother. It’s torso-sized (A3 paper) and took a while. This drawing for me is particularly special because it incorporates so much of my brother’s life and I felt that in drawing it I got to know him a lot better. We spent time together discussing how the design would take shape and what he felt was important to include. My favourite part is in the bottom right-hand corner – the intertwined thistle and rose (the national flowers of Scotland and England).
Alyssia MacAlister is a writer, editor, artist and mother, who lives with her partner in Brighton. On both page and stage, Alyssia is concerned with exploring narratives with a poetic frame, finding the beautiful in the strange. In writing she can find unspoken traumas and the meanings behind silences. Wide-ranging past interests include virtual reality and the female body, spiders and grief. Alyssia’s specialty is prose poetry, but she often works in found poetry and experiments with more traditional verse. In addition, Alyssia writes lucid fiction and essays, while also creating artwork mostly in pencil. She also has a scalpel eye for editing any kind of poetry or prose and can produce poetry workshops.
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