New Forms (26): Newspaper Blackout Poems

As far as I can see, these are the same as erasure poems, except that you (only) use text from a newspaper.

See here. 

New Forms (25): The Golden Shovel

This not-quite golden (?peat) shovel is displayed in the Somerset Levels, 
having come from the China Clay Museum in Cornwall

24 November 2017 news update: there is now an international Golden Shovel competition run by Roosevelt University for young people and international undergraduate students: details here. 

* * *

I attended a poetry workshop and reading at the ¡Cornucopia! Alde Valley Festival on Saturday. One of the poems read out to us by Sue Wallace-Shaddad was in the Golden Shovel form. This was new to me. Its name immediately brought to mind not only Wordsworth's 'host of golden daffodils', but a diverse array of other 'golden' items, rules and concepts - the goose's golden eggs, the Golden Section, a golden handshake and so on.

The image that lodged most firmly in my mind was the 'Golden Marshalltown' trowel, the prized possession of an archaeologist, in The Golden Marshalltown: A Parable of the the Archaeology of the 1980s by Kent V. Flannery (American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 84, No. 2, June, 1982, 265-278): you can read about the article here. 

I am still trying to work out the connection between the trowel and the shovel since both (like the pen: remember Heaney) can be used for digging.

Here are a few links to websites about the new poetry form...

• the poem by Terrance Hayes that gave the form its name.
• about Terrance Hayes, the creator of the form and about Gwendolyn Brooks, in whose honour the form was created.  
• concerning the rules, as laid out by Robert Lee Brewer
• The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, edited by Dr. Peter Kahn , Ravi Shankar and Patricia Smith. About the volume's launch - here.
• 'Prayer' by Carolyn Oliver, a Golden Shovel poem using lines from Emily Dickinson, on the Frontier Poetry site. 
• Poetry School review by Bridget Minamore of Seasonal Disturbances by Karen McCarthy Woolf (Carcanet). The review mentions the poet's Golden Shovel poems which feature in the book.
• Excellent advice and help from Peter Kahn and the Young Poets' Network - here.