Wednesday 20th January was a unique day for pupils and staff, with the usual School day replaced by the 11+ Interview Day. With this in mind, Teacher of English, Ms Geussens chose something different for our Poem of the Day.

Pupils had the gift of a Wednesday off, and had to decide how to spend their time instead. Freedom! What a luxury. What a burden. As teachers, interviewing what will be the next generation of FHS girls, we are pondering some of the same ideas: how to break free from expected routines – how to encourage creativity – how to ask questions that will open rather than close doors.

In this spirit, I’d like to introduce you to one of my favourite poetic experiments. I’m not quite sure I can call it a poem, and it’s easier to show you than tell you.

In 1966, the artist Tom Phillips decided that he would buy a cheap novel, and recreate it completely, by painting over, cutting up and collaging every page until the words became his own. He’s been working on it ever since. I’ve often used it in my lessons as an example of blackout poetry, although the phrase seems inadequate. Phillips has made the pages more colourful, rather than blacking them out, and has created new meaning, rather than destroying the original intent. (My favourite pages show you the original text peering through the paint, as if trying to figure out what it is now.) The book was called A Human Document. Phillips calls his A Humument, a nonsense word that’s fun to say aloud. You can see all of it here.

By doing this, Phillips is of course breaking the rules. He took a Victorian novel – that most venerable oftextual forms – and arguably, destroyed it. You can never get that paint back off. Some of the pages he created are a bit rude! It’s not even clear what it is: a poem? A painting? An act of vandalism? Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to disrupt what is expected, so that we can create something new.

I certainly hope you will not begin eyeing up your books from the FHS Library, with your hands creeping towards the scissors and paint. However, perhaps you have an old newspaper lying around, or even a paperback a younger sibling destroyed with crayon. I really suggest you give it a go. It’s both harder than it looks, and much more fun.