Uncreative Writing

Guest post by David Riley

Below is something I made using one of the free word shuffling programs that can be found on the web and a couple of entries from recent Blackpool Gazettes, an idea suggested to me when I read about Kenneth Goldsmith, who had created a piece of work out of the whole day's content from one New York Times paper. This isn't found poetry or even collage but possibly related to it. I haven't moved things around so it's still alphabetical. There's scope here for finding new meanings, isn't there? Something worth trying perhaps?

3am argue blackpool blackpools cash chair class come cost council day deckchair deckchairs emro end forward gazette go golden happen id including just mile modern move need new other place police process prom pub resort say seaside seem shame sight spent stock talk time town visitor vital working year

Indeed, in the 21st c., it is difficult to find poetry that does not have some “found” component, the ne plus ultra exemplified by Kenneth Goldsmith’s Day (2003), which is the transcription of the entire text of a single day’s— September 1, 2000— New York Times from beginning to end, consolidating headlines, columns, and ads, so as to make one seamless and surprisingly novel text. Goldsmith himself calls such works “uncreative writing.” His New York Trilogy of 2003– 5 (Weather; Traffic; and Sports) is entirely found text: its transcription of the specific radio broadcasts in a given time period does not include a single word that the poet can call his own.   (The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012), Princeton University Press, Kindle Edition)

 

Goldsmith's thoughts on 'uncreativity' are expanded in his interview, Uncreativity as Creative Practice.

Happy 1000th. Here's to another millennium.