Subtractive Poetry

 “When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.”

William Burroughs

I thought it would be interesting to set parameters when playing with newspaper blackouts, and so I combined subtractive poetry with six word memoirs. I chose to black out text from a series of 'News in Brief' stories and to reduce these down to six of the original words to tell a new story.  This is a tool that could be applied to assist in the creative naming of artwork, exhibitions, or personal design philosophies.

Six word memoirs are a concentrated form of storytelling. The idea is that stories can be communicated effectively and more poetically through a limited word count. Writing six word memoirs is fun and addictive, finding the six magical words within one short newspaper story is even better.

http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/