‘Black Tortoise Kowtows’: New Cover Art by Herman Lau!

You Will Learn

Step into spring — and find magic in the mud — with Black Tortoise Kowtows by Herman Lau, cover artist for Issue 34.

Black Tortoise Kowtows is from Herman’s personal project Painted Cards from a Kung Fu Tarot. As he tells us, “Each card was to represent a technique or concept, and this card was going to be 0-The Fool … (K)neeling in the mud again? You keep coming back to this place; you are stuck. You’ll learn a thousand techniques. But the first was how to kneel, to endure. It will cost you. You will revel in the movement, but you will also pay for it the rest of your life … The pain of not moving will outweigh the pain of moving … The question does not become clearer with repetition. But you don’t care. Is that why you’re The Fool?”

For more on the inspiration behind the image, pick up your copy of Issue 34, Spring 2022.

Order your copy of Issue 34, Spring 2022 today!

And join us on Saturday, May 14th (10am PST) over at our YouTube channel for the virtual launch of Issue 34!

Look forward to readings by feature author JJ Lee and others. Also, tune is as final judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar announces the winners of this year’s Magpie Award for Poetry!

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Herman Lau is a freelance artist from Edmonton, Alberta. His interests in illustration stem from the stories and games he grew up with, mythologies full of movement and characters to inspire his drawn illusions. His artwork appears both locally and internationally, including at an exhibition at the Museum of American Illustration in New York, and in a collection at State Library Victoria, Australia. He has also run children’s visual art programs for non-profit organizations and galleries, and provided graphic facilitation services for various municipal groups and initiatives. If you’d like to see more of Herman’s work, then visit him at paintedmonk.wordpress.com and on Instagram at paintedmonk.