Making lithographs of a Newspaper Blackout Poem from Austin Kleon on Vimeo.

More footage from our printmaking extravaganza last weekend in San Marcos. This time, it’s Clif Riley making lithograph prints of “Visual Thinking.”

Read more about lithography (and printmaking).

Silkscreening Newspaper Blackout Poems from Austin Kleon on Vimeo.

(Youtube link for Iphone users.)

Video of my friend and painter/printmaker extraordinaire Curtis Miller pulling screenprints of Newspaper Blackout Poems last weekend in San Marcos, Texas. (Tell him how awesome they are on twitter.)

(Watch it in full HD!)

The prints will be on sale soon!

Also: the ACLU digs blackout poetry:

The book is still over half a year away, so my wife Meg and I are making it our summer project to sell some mini-poster prints of poems that won’t be in the book—perfect for hanging on your wall, cubicle, etc. They’ll be silkscreened by hand by my good friend and super-talented painter/printmaker, Curtis Miller. We’ll be pulling prints in San Marcos next weekend, hoping to have them up for sale in a week or so.

We need your help picking which poems to offer! Please take a look at the following batch of poems, and give us your input in the form below…
The people have spoken! See the results below…

How To Be A Texan

Tandem

Visual Thinking

Agoraphobia

Honesty

Overheard on the Titanic

Heartland Goodness and Romance

Harrigan Isn’t Afraid

The Final Results:

You get an e-mail from a marketing agency representing a product you use on a regular basis. They “love your work,” so they want to “share” it along with other product “enthusiasts” on a new “social marketing” website they’ve developed. They offer you a credit and a link.

Sounds good, right? Free publicity from a company whose products you already use?

Wrong. Check out the draconian user agreement they’ve attached:

see it bigger

Sorry, ______: I’ll still use your products, but I don’t sign the rights to my work and my face away without a big fat check. You want to feature my work on your blog? Ask for a Creative Commons commercial license, and then maybe we’ll talk. (See below)

Tiger Woods doesn’t endorse Nikes for free, so why should artists endorse art supplies for free?

Don’t let some corporation take advantage of you under the disguise of “social networking.”

(more…)

This one was a casualty of the final round of editing for the book. I went on a marathon session this weekend, cutting and adding, and I think I finally came up with a satisfying shape for the thing. Excited for y’all to see it. Should be a pre-order button one of these days…

And thus, we wrap up International Newspaper Blackout Poetry Month with poem 30 out of 30!

Looking back, I think I must’ve been nuts to set off on something like this, but I’m glad I did. Heck, 30 poems…that’s 1/5 of a book! Maybe I’ll see if I can’t make a little mini-zine out of them?

Thanks again to everyone who spread the link love and tried their own poems. Y’all are awesome.

Here’s a list of all 30:

1. POETRY CAN BE BORN
2. THE BEAUTY OF EARLY WORKS
3. DASHED HOPES
4. HERE THERE BE DRAGONS
5. WHAT SOUNDS SIMPLE
6. HOW WE KEPT BUSY
7. HISTORY DITCH
8. CATASTROPHE INTO NOTHING
9. LONG-DISTANCE
10. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
11. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THEIR MUSIC
12. THE FACE OF THE EARTH
13. LET’S PRETEND
14. IN THE SUBURBS
15. JUST A MATTER OF TIME
16. KNOWING THE CHANCES
17. CLOSE THE SHOP
18. IN AND OUT OF DIRT!
19. OFFING
20. ME AND MY BIG MOUTH
21. WINE CAN HELP THE PARTY
22. SUITLAND
23. PIGGY-BACK
24. A SPECULATIVE SCHOOL
25. THE RIGHT TO DECLINE
26. INVOCATION
27. THE DATE
28. THE CALL CENTER
29. HOW TO BE POPULAR
30. RATHER THAN REPAIR

If you want to browse all 30 poems, you can use this link:

http://www.austinkleon.com/tag/international-newspaper-blackout-poetry-month-2009/

I’m taking a break for the month of May. Might have some new ones in June.

Poem 29 out of 30 for International Newspaper Blackout Poetry Month.

SHOUT-OUT! to all the folks on Twitter who mentioned the poems during April (Sorry if I missed your name here! Post it in the comments!) In no particular order:

@RubberJenny
@catpoetry
@Margosita
@brookerandel
@luismendo
@marcjohns
@rhimyers
@coryleahy
@davidburn
@johntunger
@gemarkeerd
@inkscar
@DustinFaulkner
@ywalker
@thenewmckechnie
@artwithbyte
@349
@BicyclingNate
@productjustin
@ItsMikeD
@LPT
@iggynore
@drawn
@BladBlog