We were digging in our flat files and found some extremely limited-edition prints that we pulled way back in 2010 at Texas State in San Marcos. The first is “Agoraphobia,” an edition of 18 screenprints. Here’s video of artist Curtis Miller pulling them:
The other print, “The Travelogue,” is a lithograph in an edition of 20:
Here’s a close-up of the raw image:
Here’s video of Clif Riley working on them:
You can buy both in our shop.
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.)
My first book, Newspaper Blackout, is now available as an eBook.
Word of caution: you need to have a reasonably large, preferably backlit screen to appreciate these things. If you just have an old Kindle or an eReader with a tiny screen, you’d be better off buying the paperback. (I haven’t tested every device, but I can say it looks really great in iBooks on an iPad. Maybe even better than on paper.)
The eBook also contains some “deleted scenes”—a dozen or so poems that got cut from the original manuscript—and a new afterword.
The holidays are coming up, which means that I’m getting a lot of email from folks who want to buy prints of my work to give as gifts.
Unfortunately, we won’t be selling prints until next year. (My wife Meg is working hard on planning the logistics—we’ll be selling signed, limited-edition screenprints of new and old poems.) Prints available now!
In the meantime, here’s how to get a cheap print:
1. Buy a copy of Newspaper Blackout and a regular ol’ 8×10 frame.
2. Razor out a poem you like.
3. Frame and enjoy!
If you’re desperate for a gift, you can also get a signed copy of Steal Like An Artist from Bookpeople here in Austin, Texas. They ship everywhere. Order one here.
If you’d like to know when prints are available, sign up for my weekly newsletter.
Earlier this month, I posted a blackout on Instagram and a follower commented, “Sounds like the beginning of a good tale.”
That got me wondering if could tell a ghost story in blackouts for the rest of October—one blackout a day, each made from the September 29th edition of the NYTimes. (Which, as you can see above, just happened to have a lot of ghost references…)
What I ended up with was a long poem about sexually-frustrated ghosts. Not fine literature, but it was fun to make. Read the whole thing below. Happy Halloween!
This site participates in the Amazon Affiliates program, the proceeds of which keep it free for anyone to read.