Emoetry Zine
Emoetry is a collection of existential ramblings, rants, and ruminations written throughout my twenties as I worked through questions around identity and trauma.
The inspiration for this zine came from journaling to help process emotions around a recent trauma. I didn’t always consider myself a creative writer, but this experience felt necessary to write just for myself—if only to have this particular memory live outside of my head.
Throughout the process of journaling, I soon remembered other bits of therapeutic writing I had chaotically collected in old journals throughout the years. Revisiting them brought back vivid memories of my exact feelings at the time they were written.
As my 30th birthday was approaching, I wanted to honor all of the versions of myself throughout my twenties that were retained in these poems. And I wanted to share it with others in hopes of finding connection through shared human experiences.
Designing the shapes that depicted my emotions was almost as cathartic as writing them. Visually, I was influenced by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s Calligrammes published in 1918. In these poems, he arranged words to create a drawing related to his poem—often about his experiences as a soldier in World War I. I loved how his poems guide the reader's eye and lead them to process both the words and the image before interpreting the poem. I wanted to bring readers to experience my poems similar to how we often experience difficult emotions, turning them over and over until we can finally see the bigger picture.
One poem, Unraveling a spiral, was a running list I collected in my early twenties of things people said to me as a response to my depressive episodes. Most of it is conflicting and sometimes silly, albeit well-intentioned advice. And some of it included raw reactions of loved ones I unfortunately hurt as I tried to pull myself out of a tangled spiral of depression, anxiety, and self-harm.
I intentionally designed this to be a little hard to read to evoke how these thoughts had circled around my mind. I arranged these phrases into two concentric spirals going in opposite directions, so looking at it straight on creates an optical illusion where they sort of start to spin and blur together.
Unraveling a spiral. Emoetry by Rachel Leite
If you really want to read it, you have to physically turn the zine and follow the spiral from the inside out, to untangle the mess. Any time I personally try to read it, I often need to step away, which is a valid response to many things in life!
Each zine was printed on different color paper for two reasons. First, this was my first time vending and I had limited time and resources. A friend of mine let me use some sample paper she’d gotten at a discount from a local paper supplier, and I got a bundle of multi-colored copy paper from Office Depot. Second, producing a rainbow of zines filled with my most vulnerable emotions about my identity just made sense. It also reminded me of the feelings wheel.
I shared this zine along with some stickers at Dallas Zine Fest in 2022 and it was a day packed with so much art and community. I kept hearing from people vending and visiting that it was inspiring just being there. I loved sharing a space with people who had been doing this for years, and meeting other newbie vendors like me. It was a wonderful experience overall, but ultimately choosing to be vulnerable was the most rewarding part of participating. Of course, not everyone would connect with what I made, but it was a joy to share a little bit of myself with each person who did connect with it.
Want a copy? Send me an email with your favorite color(s) and I’ll mail one to you for just the cost of shipping from Texas to wherever you are!
