Next week I’m going to be an artist-in-residence at All Saints’ Episcopal School in Fort Worth, Texas. The teachers asked if I had a video explaining how to make a newspaper blackout poem. I didn’t, so I made one. Enjoy.
See also: A brief history of newspaper blackout
Every morning I try to pick up a newspaper and a Sharpie marker, and I make one of my newspaper blackout poems:
This is what one looks like after I scan it into Photoshop and play with the levels a bit:
(It’s sort of like if the CIA did haiku.)
So cool: ACM Chicago has commissioned composers and musicians to set my poems to music.
UPDATE: Here’s a writeup from the The Columbia Chronicle.
The folks over at the Speakeasy Blog asked me to make some poems from the WSJ, and I obliged. I sent them five, thinking they’d only run one or two, and they ran them all. They’re a little hard to read over there, so I’m re-posting them here:
* * *
“Tex”
* * *
“The Market”
* * *
“The Ark”
* * *
“Land”
* * *
“The Secretary”
Note: this post has been updated since 2010.
People always ask me when I’m going to develop an iPad app for Newspaper Blackout. I’ve always told them that I don’t want to because I think there’s something magic about feeling the newsprint in your hands, smelling the marker fumes as you make your poem.
Even though I still prefer the old analog way, there are times (mostly on the bus or out on the porch or lying in bed) when I don’t have a newspaper and a marker in front of me, so I’ve been experimenting with making them on my iPad.
Here’s how I do it, if you want to play along…
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