Austin Kleon

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HOW TO SAVE YOUR NEWSPAPER

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Walter Isaacson has written a front-page article for Time Magazine entitled “How To Save Your Newspaper.” The Oklahoman is taking their own approach to getting you to buy that Sunday paper:

Think a newspaper is good only for reading, recycling or wrapping dead fish?

Think again. Think … poetry.

Newspaper Blackout Poetry is the creation of poet Austin Kleon and only requires three things: a newspaper, a black marker and your creativity. We know you’ve got it, Oklahoma, and we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is.

Grab a copy of this Sunday’s The Oklahoman at CVS and other locations and pick any story from that paper. Take a marker and black out lines from the story, leaving only the words you want to remain visible. Those words become your poetry.

Your poem can rhyme, or not. It can be a haiku. It could be a limerick (keep it clean), it could be free-form. Kleon will help us pick the winner.

Problem solved!

Comments

  1. Couple of screen grabs of the Oklahoman’s piece:

    oklahoman blackout poetry oklahoman blackout poetry

    Writer has an epiphany: Newspaper + marker = Poems and a popular contest

    “I did this book on the bus on the way to work, during my lunch breaks down in my work building’s basement, and on the bus on my way back home.” Kleon said. “I find a day job incredibly liberating because when you…don’t have to worry about making money from art, it frees you up to experiment and to try new things. Work gives me…structure….If you can’t find time for your art, then it must not be important enough for you.”

  2. Aaand…here are the winners of the blackout poem contest. I was very pleased to hear the winner was an 80-year woman:

    A team of editors whittled the entries down to 20 and sent them to our very own blackout poet laureate, Austin Kleon, who popularized the art form. Kleon only was sent the poems. He did not know the name, gender or age of the poet.

    His favorites: Rose Gorr, 80, of Oklahoma City, and Ethan Biller, 11, of Seminole. Here’s what Kleon had to say about his two winning picks:

    “I liked the Adult pick because 1) like all good poetry, it presented very vivid images that created a picture in my mind’s eye I hadn’t seen before; 2) It starts by asking the question at the heart of all good art: ‘What if?’”

    “I liked the Youth pick because it had the satisfying structure of a story: beginning (‘mind jammed’), middle (‘words come’), end (‘i write poetry’).”

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