How about this for an idea? I’ve written previously about “blackout poetry”, inspired by the work of Austin Kleon. (Here’s that previous post) The idea is that you make a poem by blacking out most of the words on a printed page of a newspaper, leaving just a few words behind. Previously, I tried it with the first page of a Geography text-book as a way of teaching. Now I’ve had an idea… rather than just doing odd pages, how about doing a whole book? Blackout Kerouac. Blackout Hemingway. I could do a separate little poem for each page of the book, or perhaps they could be tied together into a blackout poetry epic stretching through page after page. As with my idea for using blackouts to help students find deeper meanings in text-book pages, I could make the blackouts into a book-within-a-book, telling a deeper story, or a counterpoint story to the one originally printed. So… what book to use as a starting point? I’m thinking something from classic literature like Moby Dick or Anna Karenina. But, then, that would be a mammoth task. Perhaps I want something smaller. Heart of Darkness? Death in Venice? Yes, there’s an idea. Watch this space but, as ever, don’t hold your breath.
An idea: a blackout book!
January 10, 2014 by petergknight
Posted in From the road | Tagged Austin Kleon, poetry, writing |
Peter G Knight
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