Bianca Stone has a healthy fear of illustrations. There are no images inside her 2012 chapbook, I Saw the Devil with His Needlework, and none on the cover. “We respond to images immediately, and we look to them for explanation,” says the 28-year-old Stone. “I don’t want to tell anybody how to interpret a poetic line. It’s not good for the poem.”

It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Stone, the granddaughter of the late, celebrated poet Ruth Stone, is also an illustrator. She has gained attention for what she calls “poetry comics”: original poems cradled within illustrated panels that contain characters, action, and a sense of place.

…When asked what impact her art has on her poetry, Stone says that she tries not to overthink the connection between her two different, often entwined modes of expression. “I don’t always know what I’m doing,” she says, “but that’s such an awesome place to be.”