Are you or do you know of a teacher or student who has used Newspaper Blackout Poems in the classroom? Are you a writer using them in your writing group or creative writing workshop?
If so, please share your experience in the comments or e-mail me. I’m looking for lesson plans, results, testimonials, photos, videos, or even a few simple sentences about how you went about teaching them, what the response was, etc.
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: Check out the comments for examples!
In neat little rows in Adobe Bridge (which has been a total life-saver):
This is just the “yes” folder. It needs to be whittled down to 150 or less and sequenced.
52 in the “no/maybe/blog” folder.
224 total.
It’s still 26 shy of my goal of 250, but there’s only a month until the manuscript is due, so I might have to just end up short. So it goes.
Here’s what the Photoshop grunt-work looks like:
Wish me luck.
A lot of good entries this month, but the winner was Erica Westcott of Virginia Beach, VA, for her poem, “Enigma.”
I love the restraint Erica showed in this poem and the top-heavy black space. Here’s what she had to say about the making of it:
I am a mild mannered histology technician by day, and in my spare time I enjoy skydiving, knitting, and reading. After stumbling across your blog and admiring all the blackout poems, I thought I’d try my hand at one. They looked pretty easy, something to pass my lunch hour at work: just pick out a few words and string them together somehow, sort of like refrigerator magnet poetry. Wrong! I struggled for several days before coming up with something that sounded and looked just right. (Rarely is the structural appearance of what I write as important as the words themselves.) The subject matter of the original newspaper article was an amusing distraction, too. I never imagined the travails of a hostess — who knew! — mixed with a snippet of a second article could all be pared down and curiously transformed into poetry at the end.
Our runner-ups: Sarah Reyes from Newtown, PA, Brandon Weaver from La Mirada, CA, and Amy E. Hall from Franklin, TN.
Congratulations, Erica, Sarah, Brandon, and Amy! Y’all will get your free books next September.
And an honorable mention goes out to Nick Wiesneski, who just couldn’t get it together in time to make the deadline, but finished his poem anyways, and sent it in in-progress and completed:
You can see all the winners of the contest in the Newspaper Blackout Poems Flickr Pool, and add your own to the mix!
A big thank-you to everyone who entered the four contests. Y’all were great.
Posting around here for the next month or so might be pretty slow, as I’m in the home stretch of finishing up the book manuscript. If you’re dying for more blackout action, check out this interview I did via e-mail with Mitch Knox, a journalism student from Australia, where we discuss the contest, the book, and Garfield Minus Garfield, amongst other things.
And stay tuned for fun stuff planned for January! I’m thinking about having an international contest, where y’all can send me whatever you want (as long as it’s in English and I can read it). I’ll pick a winner, or winners, and send them a signed copy out of my own personal stash. So keep practicing!
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.
[download high-quality GIF image] | [download PDF]
You can go about the creation of your poem in one of two ways:
WITH MARKER FUMES
WITHOUT MARKER FUMES
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!
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)
Problems with your submission? E-mail: blackoutpoems [at] gmail [dot] com
Lots of dentistry-themed poems this month, but the winner was Marty Smith of Washington, DC, for his poem, “Teeth.”
I dig the graphic inventiveness of Marty’s poem—”subtraction” method, indeed!
Our runner-ups were all from the grand state of Illinois: Pete Anderson from Joliet, and Kristen Delap and James Francis Flynn from Chicago.
Congratulations, Marty, Pete, Kristen, and James! Y’all will get your free books next September.
Okay, folks: you have one more shot at a free book. Check back November 1st for the next contest!
This site participates in the Amazon Affiliates program, the proceeds of which keep it free for anyone to read.
