Austin Kleon

You are here: Blog / Search for "challenge"

Search Results for: challenge

BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE

BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE

Last week Meg and I drove out to San Angelo, Texas. My friend Laurence Musgrove had invited me out to Angelo State to give a talk to a poetry class and conduct a blackout poetry workshop. The idea was to have a kind of “warm up” presentation to get ideas for any book tour I might do. This is the first time I had done anything like this, and how it went far exceeded my expectations. The students were great: they were engaged, eager, and they asked awesome questions. (Laurence posted a great Flickr set of the workshop – the photos in this post are his.)

Below I’ve posted the complete slideshow:

Here I am hating on Microsoft Word:

BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE

Here’s how the workshop went:

  • I taped newspaper broadsheets to the walls and gave everyone a marker
  • We formed a line, and I started by circling one anchor word or phrase
  • The next person in line was instructed to build off that anchor phrase
  • We kept going until poems emerged

BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE

BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE

BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE

The challenge, as always, was to get the students circling concrete nouns and verbs — words that put images in the head.

This combo made us all chuckle:

BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE

We only had a half hour or so, so we didn’t get any finished poems, but I promised everybody I’d go home and see what I could get out of the work we started. I’ll post the results here when I get a chance.

Thanks to Laurence, Angelo State, and all the great students!

I’m hoping we can do more of these workshops after the book comes out.

TRUCE

seek a truce / to reduce the gross domestic / carbon dioxide emissions / and tough speech, threats, and demands / of what we are saying in the house

Heads up: the folks at SoulPancake are having a blackout poetry challenge. I like the way they describe the poems:

…looking for rhythms and patterns and poetry using only the words printed on a single sheet of a magazine or newspaper. The rest is blacked out with a Sharpie, á la Austin Cleon [sic], whose newspaper blackout poems touch on relationships, cartwheels, nothingness—oh, and big cats.

It’s much more difficult than it looks. But your reward is the poem within: Did you just write it? Or was it there waiting for you all along?

In other news: prints will be available very, very soon. But not from us… (Hint!)

Pre-order the book

Become a fan on facebook!

NOVEMBER NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT POEMS CONTEST

The contest is now closed. See the winners!

Read the official contest rules.

For this contest, one winner and three runners-up will receive a free copy of the book, along with the chance to be published in the book!

To enter the contest, you must be 18 and a US resident (sorry to all you young’uns and overseas folk!) One entry per monthly contest.

The two columns of newspaper below are from November 1, 1908, 100 years ago. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to turn them into a poem.

november newspaper blackout contest

[download high-quality GIF image] | [download PDF]

Directions

You can go about the creation of your poem in one of two ways:

WITH MARKER FUMES

  1. Download the PDF and print it out (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader)
  2. Black out the words in the newspaper text into a poem
  3. Scan or take a digital picture of the poem. Be sure it’s readable.
  4. Save an image of the poem as a .jpg, .gif, or .png file less than 2MB in file size
  5. Send in the file along with the required information using the submission form

WITHOUT MARKER FUMES

  1. Download the high-resolution GIF and save it to your desktop (right-click save as on the link)
  2. Open the GIF with an image-editing program like Paint or Photoshop
  3. Black out the words in the newspaper text into a poem
  4. Save an image of the poem as a .jpg, .gif, or .png file less than 2MB in file size
  5. Send in the image file along with the required information using the submission form

TIPS

  • Combine both columns into one poem—don’t just do each column at a time! It doesn’t make for a good read. Skip between the two…this allows for more interesting possibilities. You can see the previous winners here and here and here.
  • Remember that Westerners read left-to-right, up-to-down. Poems read best if they follow that pattern.
  • You can get around the left/right/up/down problem by connecting words with whitespace. (See an example.)
  • What you are doing when making a blackout poem, in the words of Allen Ginsberg, is “shopping for images.” Nouns and verbs make the best images.
  • Regardless of where it’s located in the text, I always start a poem by looking for a word or image that resonates with me and move from there.
  • It’s a lot like a word search.
  • You don’t have to use the whole text. What to leave in / leave out / how long is the magic.
  • Poetry doesn’t have to be serious!
  • Try not to think to hard about it and let it flow! It might take you a bunch of tries. Don’t be intimidated! Anyone can do it!

One winner and three runners-up will be announced at the end of the month.

See the previous winners from August, September, and October.

Help us spread the word! Link to:
http://www.austinkleon.com/newspaper-blackout-poems

Good luck!

Submission form

Read the official contest rules.

Remember: only US residents 18 and older. One contest entry per month, please. Be sure to fill out all required fields and keep your image file limited to 2MB or smaller.

All entries must be submitted by November 21, 2008 (5:00 P.M. EST)

The contest is now closed. See the winners!

Problems with your submission? E-mail: blackoutpoems [at] gmail [dot] com

Become a fan of the poems on Facebook

OCTOBER NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT POEMS CONTEST

THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. SEE THE WINNERS.

Enter the contest and you could win a free book and be published!

Read the official contest rules.

Get out your markers: this is the third of four monthly contests we’ll be running for the rest of the year. For each monthly contest, one winner and three runners-up will receive a free copy of the book, along with the chance to be published in the book!

To enter the contest, you must be 18 and a US resident (sorry to all you young’uns and overseas folk!) One entry per monthly contest.

The two columns of newspaper below are from October 1, 1908, 100 years ago. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to turn them into a poem.

september newspaper blackout contest

[download high-quality GIF image] | [download PDF]

Directions

You can go about the creation of your poem in one of two ways:

WITH MARKER FUMES

  1. Download the PDF and print it out (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader)
  2. Black out the words in the newspaper text into a poem
  3. Scan or take a digital picture of the poem. Be sure it’s readable.
  4. Save an image of the poem as a .jpg, .gif, or .png file less than 2MB in file size
  5. Send in the file along with the required information using the submission form

WITHOUT MARKER FUMES

  1. Download the high-resolution GIF and save it to your desktop (right-click save as on the link)
  2. Open the GIF with an image-editing program like Paint or Photoshop
  3. Black out the words in the newspaper text into a poem
  4. Save an image of the poem as a .jpg, .gif, or .png file less than 2MB in file size
  5. Send in the image file along with the required information using the submission form

TIPS

  • Combine both columns into one poem—don’t just do each column at a time! It doesn’t make for a good read. Skip between the two…this allows for more interesting possibilities. You can see the previous winners here and here.
  • Remember that Westerners read left-to-right, up-to-down. Poems read best if they follow that pattern.
  • You can get around the left/right/up/down problem by connecting words with whitespace. (See an example.)
  • What you are doing when making a blackout poem, in the words of Allen Ginsberg, is “shopping for images.” Nouns and verbs make the best images.
  • Regardless of where it’s located in the text, I always start a poem by looking for a word or image that resonates with me and move from there.
  • It’s a lot like a word search.
  • You don’t have to use the whole text. What to leave in / leave out / how long is the magic.
  • Poetry doesn’t have to be serious!
  • Try not to think to hard about it and let it flow! It might take you a bunch of tries. Don’t be intimidated! Anyone can do it!

One winner and three runners-up will be announced at the end of the month, along with our last contest in November.

You can see the previous winners here and here.

Help us spread the word! Link to:
http://www.austinkleon.com/newspaper-blackout-poems

Good luck!

Submission form

Read the official contest rules.

Remember: only US residents 18 and older. One contest entry per month, please. Be sure to fill out all required fields and keep your image file limited to 2MB or smaller.

All entries must be submitted by October 23, 2008 (5:00 P.M. EST)

THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. SEE THE WINNERS.

Problems with your submission? E-mail: blackoutpoems [at] gmail [dot] com

Become a fan of the poems on Facebook

Recent posts

Follow me elsewhere

This site participates in the Amazon Affiliates program, the proceeds of which keep it free for anyone to read.