Last time I posted a blackout poem for you guys was around half a year ago. To be honest, I haven’t been doing much of those for a while now. Distractions, obligations and little time tends to come between people and their guilty pleasures. Yesterday, I picked up a pen, a book neither me or Silver mind destroying and started looking for words, meanings, abstractions waiting to be put together and stories to be taken apart and reassembled. In short, I did a few blackout poems and had a blast doing so.
I noticed I never explained where the whole blackout poem concept came from. A year or two ago either me or Silver stumbled on Austin Kleon’s work. In his own words he is a writer who draws. He’s published three books: “Steal like an artist”, “Newspaper blackout” and the newest addition “Show your work!”. He also posts blackout poems on his blog and among other talks he’s given a TEDtalk on this very subject.
He is very generous and open about his process and talking about creativity, taking a very practical view instead of dressing it up in mystery. Not surprisingly his work inspired us to give blackout poems a go. We were on a roll, and filled multiple square meters of our walls with funny, thoughtful or just plain weird poems. If nothing else, they make for an interesting wallpaper and it’s time well spent.
I recommend you to familiarize yourself with Austin Kleon’s work, blog and talks. Maybe it’ll give you ideas for projects of your own. If not, it’s still interesting to explore the amount of ideas he puts forward.
Smiles,
Kaija