In this project, we were assigned a poem and were required to create a conceptual poster (broadside) to honor the presented poem. I will give an explanation of the poem and then explain the inspiration for my design.

And I Was Alive, by Osip Mandelstam was a very complicated poem. With research I found out that Mandelstam was a Jewish poet living in Russia during the days of Stalin's reign. Mandelstam was very outspoken and often wrote against Stalin and his government and as you can guess, Stalin was not pleased. Stalin sent a couple of vacation vouchers to Mandelstam's residence, in which Mandelstam and his wife went to go redeem. In that instance, Mandelstam was taken prisoner and placed in a Soviet work camp where he spent the last of his days. His wife did the remarkable and memorized as many poems as she could as she knew they would all be destroyed. And I Was Alive was the last poem Osip Mandelstam wrote as he passed away the following year.

My interpretation of the poem was one of tragic beauty. He seemed to realize the power of his words, as did Stalin. And though he was persecuted and placed in a dark, lonely place, he still sees the beauty around him. He is beauty. His fellow artists and creative thinkers are beauty, and Stalin was out to destroy it. He used a lot of contradicting verbiage and I wanted to display that in my design. I used a Russian typeface and a handwritten font to contrast each other. ALIVE doesn't look alive at all, as it's contrasted with the cold strong feel of the Russian type. I used a photograph of the snow to depict the scene and time of when this poem was written. The bars, both thick and thin represent the imprisonment of those that were unfortunate, including Mandelstam. The blossom represents him, and even though he is in prison, the blossom overlaps the bars to indicate, that even the harshest of environments cannot take away the beauty in which he represents. The bars, strategically placed, lead your eye throughout the poster.