Last Saturday’s workshop combined two of my favourite things: flag books and found poetry.
I love the flag book because it is easy to assemble and has a limited number of pages. This means creating content isn’t an overwhelming task. Over the years I’ve used this structure for books exploring secrets – mine and other people’s – and to gather small art works and design ideas into a compact format. I love that you can postpone the decision about what goes where until the final assembly step. And when you are adding images and text to individual pages, mistakes aren’t a disaster. Just create a new page and all is well.
I started experimenting with found poetry when I wanted to add words to the books I was making, but coming up with my own words seemed too daunting, and too personal. Rearranging someone else’s words provided some distance. My rules are simple. Find a book, tear out a page and use the words you can find on either side of the page to create a short poem/text. I’ve used all sorts of books as my starting point. Often the least promising book offers up very interesting possibilities.
In the workshop everyone made an A6 flag book and worked on a small collection of poems. We also looked at different options for adding text to pages, ranging from typewriting to ransom note lettering. I’m looking forward to our next session when people bring their filled books to show off.
