Once a month, you receive a beautiful envelope with everything you need to spend several hours making your own cut-up poetry. Each month has a limited theme.
๐ Get 6 pages of carefully selected material. May's source is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. You don't need to have read it.
๐ The pages are manually curated, typeset and printed on nice paper with good line spacing so they're perfect for cut-up poetry.
๐ I include prints of my own poems, made with the exact materials I send you. Use them as inspiration if you need it.
๐ Each month includes a beginner-friendly tutorial and guide, with a range of exercises for different experience levels.
๐ Get a personal letter with my thoughts on the text, its themes, and my experience working with it.
๐ Create poetry inspired by or in conversation with the text, or entirely unrelated. It's up to you!
๐ Optionally, share your work with the community on social, and see what others created.
Cut-up poetry, sourced from a book on Greek mythology
Why join?
It can be hard to make time for ourselves just to create, especially if we're out of the habit.
In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron shares the concept of an artist's date: a weekly excursion just for you and your inner artist. For me, the hardest part was committing to something and getting started.
I'm hoping this acts as an artist date delivery system of sorts. Uber Eats for the soul.
I love cut-up poetry. It's a regular part of my creative practice, and spiritually very similar to collage: if you like one, there's a good chance you'll like the other.
One of my favourite things in the collage community is when you see someone else use the exact same sample you just used. It's just such a delightful feeling. We're all so different, and bring our own selves to the work. And there's something really connective in it too.
How cool would it be to do that with poetry? A solo artist date, followed by a collective show and tell?
I talk a lot about the importance of sharing your art online and building community through it. I'm hoping that this mail club can bring more of that into the world.
Why Frankenstein?
I have a whole list of public-domain texts planned for this, but is there really a better starting point than Frankenstein: a book about taking parts from different places and combining them to make something new?!
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