Christopher Hitchens said that “the great thing about writing a book is that it brings you into contact with people whose opinions you should have canvassed before you ever pressed pen to paper. They write to you. They telephone you. They give you things to read that you should have read already. [Putting out a book is] a free education that goes on for a lifetime.”

Last month I got an email from Mike at The Encyclopedia Show Austin, telling me about Censored Mother Goose Rhymes—a charming little book featured in the Ransom Center’s excellent “Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored” exhibit.

Published in 1929 by a writer and editor named Kenneth Banning, it was dedicated to “THE CENSORS who have taught us how to read naughty meanings into harmless words” and was supposed to be a demonstration “of the effect of censorship upon anything it touches.” If I’m not mistaken, it was even passed out to congressmen in the middle of the censorship debates.

It’s a very very funny book.

Anyways, Mike asked me if I’d do something with the book, and while I almost never read my poems publicly, I think this book is even better read aloud, so, with the help of my iPhone, I read a few at the show.

Watch the video →

See the slides →

A few weeks ago I gave a talk on Newspaper Blackout and Steal Like An Artist at The Economist’s Human Potential summit in New York City. They had an awesome tech staff, so we even managed to weave some of my live drawings from the conference into the talk. Enjoy!

Watch the video →

The Economist had me out to their Ideas Economy “Human Potential” conference in New York last week. I gave a talk on Newspaper Blackout and Steal Like An Artist, but I also did some drawings on my iPad during the other talks, and posted them to Twitter as I drew. (Still getting used to drawing live on the iPad — not sure I love it, but I thought I’d experiment.) I’ve cleaned them up a little and collected them here.

I had the pleasure of leading a couple of blackout poetry workshops at the Dallas Museum of Art last weekend. It’s still a huge thrill for me to see a whole room full of people of all ages and backgrounds making art in the same space. I’ve found that folks really don’t need much instruction—they just need materials, some space, some time, and permission to play.

On Saturday, I led an all-teen workshop of 15 students. We worked on poems, and then we went into the galleries to soak up some inspiration. I showed them some pieces I liked and talked about how I look at art in museums and how I look at art in general. One thing I said to them is that it’s one thing to feel something about a piece of art, it’s another thing completely to be able to express it in words. Sometimes you can’t explain why you like a piece, and that’s okay.

I carried an iPad around with me, and as we were looking at the work, I’d pull up a few of my blackout poems to talk about the work in context. At a Mondrian, I talked about color and grids. In sculpture, we talked about subtraction. Etc.

In the Reves collection, which displays the Reves’ collection as it was originally displayed at their villa, I talked about my experiences with 20×200 and collecting art, and how art doesn’t just hang in a museum—it’s something you live with in your everyday life.

Thanks to all the great people at the Dallas Museum of Art for having me. I love teaching, and I love talking about art, so this was a real treat.

See more of the museum’s photos on Flickr →

So cool: ACM Chicago has commissioned composers and musicians to set my poems to music.

More details →

UPDATE: Here’s a writeup from the The Columbia Chronicle.

TEDxPennQuarter – Austin Kleon – Reinventing Poetry

Photo by Flickr user sexyfitsum

The TEDxPennQuarter folks asked me to give a 10-minute talk around the theme of “reinventing,” with the (not-at-all-lofty!) title, “Reinventing Poetry.”

It started out like almost everything I do: with doodling.

Here are doodles from my phone call with Kes Sampanthar, the organizer of the event:

Kes encouraged me to really think about my personal story and focus on the question, “What does it mean to be an artist today?” (No pressure!)

So I scrapped a lot of the ideas I had, and started thinking about story and process. The meat of the talk really started with my notes on this “Publishing 3.0″ talk given by Richard Nash:

I used the flowchart above as a starting point for all of my slides. (See them on Flickr):

This wasn’t the best presentation I’ve ever given, but the process of sorting through all these ideas turned out to be way more valuable to me than a perfect performance. And as they say, why do anything if you can’t learn something from it?

Thanks to Kes and the TEDxPennQuarter folks, and thanks to my friends for showing me a good time in DC!

See also: my visual notes from the rest of the TEDxPennQuarter talks

I was pretty thrilled when The Austin Museum of Art asked me if I wanted to do a Newspaper Blackout event. We got to display a mini-exhibit of originals and prints, and I led a 90 minute blackout poetry workshop. It was a great time, and we had a terrific turnout.

see it bigger

More photos on my Flickr and AMOA’s Facebook page.

Here’s some video Anne Heller (@annevid) shot of the talk:

Big thanks to AMOA and everyone who showed!

The great folks who organized TEDxPennQuarter out at The Newseum in Washington, D.C. not only had me out to give a talk of my own (which I’ll post soon), they asked if I’d take some visual notes for them as well. So I did my best — I missed a few speakers, since I had to get into makeup and prepare for my own talk.

I decided to revisit the sticky notes, like I did for TEDxAustin. Here I am showing them off onstage:

photo by Flickr user Sexy Fitsum

D.C., by the way, was a total blast. Thanks to my friends for showing me around their awesome town.

A few more notes below–you can see the whole set on Flickr.

You can see the rest in the full set on Flickr.

I can’t think of a nicer way to cap a release day than with a successful release party in your home town bookstore, so thanks a million to BookPeople, to my wife Meg for baking her delicious chocolate chip cookies,  and to the 50+ folks who came out on Tuesday night! Y’all are the best.

See a bunch of photos from the event on Flickr.

I started things off with a short slideshow about how I started making the poems:

And then I went into a little demonstration of how they’re done. Here I am quoting Allen Ginsberg in “A Supermarket In California“:

And here I am explaining how I think of the poems as “Word Find” puzzles we used to do as kids in elementary school:

After that, Bookpeople hooked everybody up with a marker and a newspaper, and we all set about playing:

I was really stunned by how focused everybody was, and by how many people offered to stand up and read their blackout poems for the group. It was truly awesome.  You can read some of the poems over on the Newspaper Blackout Tumblr.

After that, it was time to sign some books:

Again: thank you thank you thank you to everyone who came out! It was such a gas to see y’all with markers and newspapers in hand.

For those of you outside of Austin, we don’t have many national dates planned yet, but I’m hoping that will change, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Gomez for this really nice writeup of the event:

What stayed with me most was the fun I had. He was right: it was less like work and more like play, a kind of word search for buried humor, hidden wisdom, or laconic lament. Finding that right note of self expression might take more than a little practice however. Kleon has blacked out hundreds and hundreds of these poems. His experience is telling. I struggled with my article and then he mentioned with the timeliness of an oracle that it’s tough to write one from a political column. He finds that the articles from the “Arts or Sports sections are best.”

Austin Kleon has gained a fan not merely because of his down-to-earth and quietly erudite personality, but because the poems he has “found” buried within newsprint are poetical gems in their own right.