Friday 15 June 2012

Found Poetry & Floor Gazing Philosophy

Hi, hi, hi.

Over the course of any given week I cut up lots of paper.

It might be for my own creative projects, scrapbook pages, art journaling, cardmaking etc ... or it might when I'm working on kits and paper packs for my shop ... but whatever it is for, it's constant: there's hardly a day goes by when a leaf of an old book isn't cut loose from the rest or a specific sentence isn't seized upon and snipped free.

But ... cutting out one section of a sentence, means leaving another section behind. And cutting out lots of images for Plundered Pages packs, means some wording is left stranded.

So, in a labour of love, I've been cutting up anything leftover from my wordy dissections and have compiled little packets of wild and wonderful phrases. [The first of which have found their way into these art-journaling packs]:
But now ... these by-products have create by-products of their own: I now keep coming across little surprise messages which have wandered from the word-herd and fluttered to the floor or drifted across my desk.

 Messages such as ...
Which is always good thing to be reminded of. Don't you think?

And so, for a couple of weeks, whenever I've found one of these random messages I've scooped it up and placed it on my shelf, for safe keeping, under the watchful eye of a few good friends:

BTW: ... just to balance out the sublime with the ridiculous ... on the day I photographed these found - and profound, messages ... I also found:
...  a bead, a butterfly and a bran flake. Which have their own special qualities no doubt ... but they're not quite as poetic ... especially the bran flake.

Anyway ...

After a while I took the snippets down from the shelf and began shuffling them around until - from entirely random phrases - I found a poem. 

This poem:
If you needed to read this message today ... then I'm glad it found you too.

Julie x

11 comments:

  1. Julie, I love your work, your style of journaling and your way with the written word. It is all a great inspiration to me. Thank you for keeping a blog and sharing your work.

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  2. Fab & random way to compose poems Julie !!

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  3. Loved reading this blog post :)

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  4. Brilliant post, J

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  5. Serendipitous to have stumbled upon this message exactly when it was needed. Coincidence? Doubtful. Thank you for being the vessel. . .

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  6. I love words too and think its a clever little poem. I am teaching poetry to my Year 10s at the moment and their slightly uninspired...maybe we should make collages?

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  7. I always do this and use it in my art journals! I love how your collaged poem turned out :)

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  8. Aanother fab post - I love the way you found random words fallen about places :)

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  9. What a great idea! I usually have to hunt a long time for the found poetry I put on my ATCs etc . I think I'm going to have fun cutting up my old books, ha ha! As if I don 't have enough bits and pcs lying around! Patsy

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  10. I just love your found poem ... and yes, it's just right for me today. I once put together one from all the signs I saw on the street as I walked along it: wish I'd kept it! PS I think the bran flake has a message all its own. :)

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