One day stuck in writer’s block, Austin Kleon picked up a newspaper from the pile next to his desk and started blacking out parts with permanent marker, only leaving certain words he wanted visible. He had so much fun he continued to create these little poems (which also double as interesting looking art pieces) using this technique. He started posting them to his blog and eventually got so much attention that he wound up in a feature story on NPR’s Morning Edition. And now a collection of the poems have been published as a book. Austin wrote in his preface: “What’s exciting about the poems is that by destroying writing you can create new writing. You can take a stranger’s random words and pick and choose from them to express your own personal vision.” I’m not a huge fan of poetry but I really enjoyed reading these short pieces especially knowing he hand picked the words from existing material. It seems like a challenge almost anyone could enjoy doing. In fact in the back of the book Austin included a how to on creating one of these poems yourself which he encourages. I’m eager to try one myself! Pick up a copy of this book here and learn more about Austin here.
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© Julia Rothman 2007