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Pages from my poetry book.

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Poetry Book.

As another outcome for this unit, we had to create an eight paged booklet of poetry which we’d created over the course of the weeks. My book was heavily influenced by the process black-out poetry and the karaoke poetry task which we done during the summer project. 

There wasn’t a lot of colour within my poetry book. I thought the dark aesthetic look of it would perhaps attract a more mature audience. 

The final outcome; 

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National Poetry Day.

In order for us to celebrate national poetry day, we were asked to create a poster helping us promote the event. 

We created the posters using Adobe Illustrator. As this was our first task using this software, it was more of a practise session, to help us understand the basics and get a little more comfortable with the lay out of it. 

The context of the poster was fairly simple. We were to provide eligible information, to help people understand what the poster was promoting and where the event would be held. We were also told we could create an illustration to use as a background for the poster to help make it somewhat more appealing to the viewers. 

These were the two posters I created to help promote national poetry day. Although I am pleased with the outcome of them both, I’m not particularly fond of the concrete poetry background. I feel as if it distracts from the actual illustration (on the Pizza Poster) and that it clogs up a lot of the space within the page. Even though the poem isn't that visible on the top poster, I still feel as if it does distract from the initial illustration. 

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‘Broken Poetry’- Part two.

Following our previous task, creating the black-out poetry, we got ourselves into small groups and began discussing the poetry we had created. Within this group we started to consider and select our favourite pieces. 

After selecting our favourite pieces, we then started to categorise and put the poetry in a specific order. Whether that was what the poetry was about or how it looked. 

Once we’d done this, we then pieced our poetry together to create a zine. 

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‘Poetic Licence’ - Nathaniel Russell.

‘Poetic license is the freedom to depart from the facts of a matter or from the conventional rules of any form of language when creating, speaking, making or writing in order to create an effect.’ 

At the beginning of this session we watched a video on Nathaniel Russell, an American artist who creates posters and flyers for events, apps and websites that don't exist. He also creates posters which mock social media. 

As our response to Russell’s work, we then created our own ‘fake flyers’ using found pictures in old magazines. Our purpose for this task was to see if we could possibly create a narrative from a secondary source (being the found images). Once we had created our own flyers, we then went up into the town to hand them around and stick them too wooden fences, billboards and telephone poles. 

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“Steal Like An Artist”- Austin Kleon.

“Nothing is completely original, all creative work builds on what came before” - Austin Kleon, Steal like an artist. April 2012.

We started off our session by watching a Ted Talk video on Austin Kleon. In this video Kleon talks about his processes and how he believes that “nothing is completely original.”

Austin Kleon is an American author, artist who’s inspiration sprung from his creators block. Kleon was struggling to find some ‘original’ content and decided to start creating black-out poems from newspapers to try and help find a narrative. After he’d created his narratives, he would receive feedback from an online audience. Most would say that he was ‘stealing’ other artists ideas and that he had no originality. Upon getting this feedback, Kleon decided to research into the history of black-out poetry and see where it stemmed from. He soon realised that the whole concept of black-out poetry was something that started back in the 1760′s where cut out poetry started to get documented by an artist called Caleb Whitefoord.

Since Kleon began creating his black-out poems, he has written four books based on his narrative poetry. He tries to encourage other artists to not get discouraged and dishearten by the negative feedback of others. 

I enjoyed participating in watching and discussing Kleons video and views. Although I believe that nothing is completely original and that every ‘new’ idea one person has is just a remix of one or two previous ideas, it feels wrong to objectify art like this. No two ideas are never the same. Sure they may share some similarities such as a process or a technique, but the end results are always different.

It’s not fair to justify the way one person expresses themselves creatively on how it was previously produced.

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September 12th; 'Broken Poetry'

During the 'Broken Poetry' tasks we were asked to make a series of different type of poems using the process known as ‘black-out’ poetry and ‘cut-out’ poetry. While doing this, we had to consider the meaning of each individual word and the relationships they had with each other. This included the effect they’d have on the reader and what sort of visual imagery it would create once the poem had been pieced together. The whole purpose of these tasks was to establish a spontaneous narrative voice. 

An artist which helped inspire this workshop was beatnik writer William S Burroughs, who worked on cut up and black out techniques during the 1960′s. Burroughs work was then later developed by writer and artist, Austin Kleon. Using both writers and artists’ works as examples to ‘follow’ by, we then began to create our own blackout poetry. 

During the task, I believe I learnt how important the relationship between the individual words in an extract, from a book or newspaper, is. Whatever the original meaning of the text was had completely changed and had evolved into something new. We all had the power to take something already existing and manipulate it to shape our own thoughts and views. This is when Austin Kleon’s “Steal like an artist” quote comes to mind. Yes we were ‘stealing’ work someone had already made, but we changed it and made it somewhat better. 

I enjoyed doing this task and creating this poetry we did. The sheer spontaneous act of picking out words which stood out most, then piecing them together like a puzzle, had gratification to it. 

In the future, I will use this task to help get past the ‘creators block’ stage when lacking inspiration for my graphic work. I feel as if this is a good, easy and creative way to help stimulate a narrative for your work. 

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September 8th; Mind Melts.

The task, Mind Melts, was inspired by the work and beliefs of phrenologist Franz Joseph Gall. He believed that by the shape and configuration of the skull and brain, you could tell what type of person you were just by the investigations of your physical qualities. Using Gall’s research and studies, we were then to create illustrations of subjects which occupy our thoughts and minds on a day to day basis. 

First we were told to create a list of things which we think about daily. For me, the list seemed fairly short, until I started to incorporate things such as fears and feelings. How I felt and responded towards certain changes in like (like growing up). Once we had our list sorted and we felt as though it were enough, we then started to create the small illustrations inside ‘our’ minds. 

Upon finishing the task, we were then told to swap diagrams with someone whom we barely spoke to and create a haiku based on the imagery we saw. This was to try and see if they had communicated their thoughts via visual language correctly. 

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The Summer Project.

Creating the ten lined poem using song lyrics. 

Over the course of the summer we were sent a brief asking us to study poetry and explore the relationships between type, image and the written language.  First we were asked to look at and analyse some poetry written by famous poets such as Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickenson and Charles Bukowski. We read the poetry out loud, analysed and explore the effects the poetry had on us. As artists were we told to focus on the visual image the poetry created for us. This then lead into us creating our own poetry from random, everyday objects. As inspiration for this task we were told to listen to Tom Waits’ song “Step Right Up”. Upon listening to this, we were to do the same and create poems that made little sense but had effective visual language.

Once we’d done this task, we then picked out 10 lines from our favourite songs and created a poem using only those lines. Piecing several different song lyrics, which may or may not have the same meaning, together created a somewhat meaningful poem. 

After creating the poetry, we then had to convert the written poetry into imagery. This helped us understand what the poetry was about and establish the relationship between the written language and the images.