30 Must-See Tumblr Blogs | NewsFeed | TIME.com

His redacted masterpieces have won him both a book deal and a line of art prints sold through online gallery 20×200. The focus of his Tumblr, however, is his fans. Anyone with a marker, a newspaper and a little creativity can submit to the site. The result is a kind of free-form word search, with people providing one-liners that range from funny to enigmatic to genuinely thought-provoking. Whether or not you consider it actual poetry, it’s definitely not a bad way to recycle your morning paper.

Thanks very much to TIME readers who recommended the site and to all who’ve submitted poems in the last couple of years. Strangely enough, the site is almost exactly 2 years old! I knew there should be a site where people could submit their own poems, but I was waiting around for the right platform to come along. Luckily, a few months before the book came out, Tumblr started allowing users to submit posts. And that was that. Today the site has over 25,000 readers.

I’m still accepting poems, so feel free to send me yours: NewspaperBlackout.com→

I was pretty thrilled when The Austin Museum of Art asked me if I wanted to do a Newspaper Blackout event. We got to display a mini-exhibit of originals and prints, and I led a 90 minute blackout poetry workshop. It was a great time, and we had a terrific turnout.

see it bigger

More photos on my Flickr and AMOA’s Facebook page.

Here’s some video Anne Heller (@annevid) shot of the talk:

Big thanks to AMOA and everyone who showed!

Newspaper Blackout has been out a month, but Derik Badman is the first to spot not one, but two typos in the book. The first is on page 50 (the word “for” shows up twice), the second is on page 84 (the word “to” shows up twice).

Luckily, they’re easy to fix…

Page 36 of Newspaper Blackout, printed by Time Out Chicago.

Buy the book

see it bigger

A bonus poem for Mother’s Day: this one is from page 59 of Newspaper Blackout.

Page 21 of Newspaper Blackout. Blogged by Cal Morgan over at Fifty-Two Stories.

It’s been three whole weeks since Newspaper Blackout came out. If y’all liked the book, I’d sure appreciate a review on Amazon.

Page 90 of Newspaper Blackout. Blogged by The New Yorker.

And a great tale from Heather Brush, the books page editor at the Roanoke Times (she reviewed NB):

There’s a funny story behind my review…the book was sitting on my desk here in the newsroom, waiting for me to finish it and review it, when it disappeared. Someone swiped it! I put up “wanted” posters and mysteriously it was returned in the dark of night. Apparently, news people are very interested in this book!

A book worth stealing — that’s what I like to hear! Thanks, Heather.

Two other great reviews from The Christian Science Monitor and The Austin American-Statesman.

Also: over 500 people now follow the Newspaper Blackout Tumblr where folks post their own blackout poems. Check it out.

Page 57 of Newspaper Blackout. Blogged by The New Yorker.

For those of you in Austin, I’ll be at the Hotel San Jose tonight at 8PM, teaching you how to make blackout poems!

Our super-soft, super-badass Newspaper Blackout t-shirts are shipping this week! Get yours:

I am so excited to announce that my friends at Wire & Twine are handprinting our first-ever Newspaper Blackout t-shirt. I’m a customer, so I know their impeccable design taste and the high-quality of their products, but I also know that they’re good Ohio folks, based out of Oxford, a small town where I spent four of my favorite years.

“Creativity is subtraction.” It’s not a poem, it’s a rallying cry.

These tees are handprinted on American Apparel triblend atheletic heathered gray t-shirts. Which are super soft. (Meg and I own several.)

On sale now: store.austinkleon.com

Buy yours now! The preorder sale is now over. Check the store to see if more are available.

I can’t think of a nicer way to cap a release day than with a successful release party in your home town bookstore, so thanks a million to BookPeople, to my wife Meg for baking her delicious chocolate chip cookies,  and to the 50+ folks who came out on Tuesday night! Y’all are the best.

See a bunch of photos from the event on Flickr.

I started things off with a short slideshow about how I started making the poems:

And then I went into a little demonstration of how they’re done. Here I am quoting Allen Ginsberg in “A Supermarket In California“:

And here I am explaining how I think of the poems as “Word Find” puzzles we used to do as kids in elementary school:

After that, Bookpeople hooked everybody up with a marker and a newspaper, and we all set about playing:

I was really stunned by how focused everybody was, and by how many people offered to stand up and read their blackout poems for the group. It was truly awesome.  You can read some of the poems over on the Newspaper Blackout Tumblr.

After that, it was time to sign some books:

Again: thank you thank you thank you to everyone who came out! It was such a gas to see y’all with markers and newspapers in hand.

For those of you outside of Austin, we don’t have many national dates planned yet, but I’m hoping that will change, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Gomez for this really nice writeup of the event:

What stayed with me most was the fun I had. He was right: it was less like work and more like play, a kind of word search for buried humor, hidden wisdom, or laconic lament. Finding that right note of self expression might take more than a little practice however. Kleon has blacked out hundreds and hundreds of these poems. His experience is telling. I struggled with my article and then he mentioned with the timeliness of an oracle that it’s tough to write one from a political column. He finds that the articles from the “Arts or Sports sections are best.”

Austin Kleon has gained a fan not merely because of his down-to-earth and quietly erudite personality, but because the poems he has “found” buried within newsprint are poetical gems in their own right.