These are cut-up poems formed with words and phrases from the first pages of my novel Death Wish. (If you’re not familiar with the cut-up technique, it’s essentially about cutting up an existing text and rearranging it to create a new one, a sort of literary collage. Cut-up poetry has its roots in the Dadaism art movement of the 1920s, and was popularised by the writer William S. Burroughs in the 1960s.)
Did I struggle to cut up a Death Wish book? Not really; it was an outdated print copy. I did struggle, initially, with the aesthetics of wonky, asymmetric cut-outs and globs of glue stick on the paper. But then I leaned into the wonkiness. Because I’ve found that by accepting/embracing imperfection in art, you liberate yourself to create.
