The instructions are these:
Cut the bindings off of books found at a used book store. Find poems in the pages by the process of obliteration. Put pages in the mail and send them all around the world. Lather, rinse, repeat.
And the results are as visually interesting as they are poetically:
I tried a similar exercise some time ago from the excellent In the Palm of Your Hand: A Poet's Portable Workshop by Steve Kowit. (If you want to write poetry, I think this is a must-buy!)
Basically, you take a text and chop out of it any words or phrases that sound interesting. Then you reassemble the cut-out bits into a poem. Simple.
To prove it, here're my own experiments! (I feel like the Blue Peter team saying "Here's One I Made Earlier" - forget the reference if you're not British of a certain generation!)
The first came from a page in New Scientist, the second from an article on an Egyptologist in the Sunday Times Magazine.
(1)
Dull middle-aged scientist
Creates
Slippery concepts.
Slips unnoticed into
The mystery of consciousness.
(How deep the mystery is!)
Brainspace
Mindspace
Impenetrable language.
“This is what I am,” she cries “inside my head
A virtual world of spaces of the mind
An ever shifting pattern in the dark …
Brainspace is also mindspace!”
(2)
A commoner
Tomb-by-tomb
recording her quest (so secret).
Every movement:
swirls of ancient dust -
tomb dust.
Every footfall
on time-worn scrap:
dynastic detritus.
In the two-pillared antechamber,
the mummy - a flame-haired royal beauty
Eloquent as a hieroglyph.
Grasping her enemy by the shortened forearm
She threw her into the darkened void beyond.
(Sex always was a problem for Egyptologists.)
5 comments:
i read this thing last week. but icouldn't bring myself to deface a book...
wonderful!
i've altered a few books before. it's fun. maybe i should scan the ones i've done for myself.
for some altered books galleries, check out the links on my website (http://queenfisher.net): misc. > [ ab galleries ]
Simon - we're in the same boat here. I guess I'd have to find a totally dull and boring book before i could bear to deface it ... ohhhh now why didn't I pick up some books for this purpose at the Times warehouse sale ... they'll all get pulped anyway ...
q - thanks for the link - some very nice work here although unfortunately some of the links were down. The emphasis was much more on the art though, than the poetry. Would love to see some of the one's you've done. It would be a nice workshop to run linking poetry and art ...
this was created from bits of your posting above:
A New Scientist,
Second to an Egyptologist,
Came first from the Blue Peter team.
Visually interesting as they are,
The results are such fun,
Poetically similar,
Simple.
To prove my own generation,
I chop out bits of my own experiments,
Reassemble the psychological trauma,
Into a poem from some time ago.
magnetic poetry is something simiar to this.
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