Found Poems
The original set of found poems that I created were made traditionally (cut paper and glue) and with painted portions; eventually I moved on to assemble them digitally. But they all begin life as little bits of cut paper: I pull out the words, compose the poem, photograph the arrangement, then scan everything in before cutting each word out in Photoshop and then rearranging them in a multitude of layers. This enables me to easily adjust spacing, resize for emphasis, and also to change the colours of individual letters if the visual appearance clashes too much.
Eventually I developed the final iteration, using my beloved collection of paper ephemera – all safely scanned in – and drawing and splashing as much digital paint on them as I wished, without resulting in a sodden mess. I’ve toyed with the idea of a more minimal aesthetic, and creating something more akin to the monochrome palette of original Dadaist works. And then I’ve also thought of animating them. The verisimilitude of age combined with new technology might be the best of both worlds! The evolution continues, as I will never grow tired of playing with words.
When I was at art college, one of my lecturers talked about Dada poetry – of the movement’s rejection of logic and rationality, and embrace of the nonsensical and absurd. The concept fired my imagination. I loved the idea of creating poems like ransom letters! I enjoyed reading poetry, sometimes wrote it along more conventional lines, but I was tickled by the potential for random surrealism. It just sounded so fun.
I quickly decided to use whole words and phrases rather than individual letters (too tedious), and busily got cutting on hundreds of magazines, mostly fashion, house & garden and travel magazines. I also decided to incorporate images, and cut them out at the same time. I made one rule for myself: I would plunge my hand into the old film canister storing all the scraps, and I had to create the poem using every word I pulled out.
