A box of wonderful ideas

14 April 2026

An open black box full of cards, with the title card saying A Box of Ideas by Stephen Emmerson

A Box of Ideas by Stephen Emmerson from Timglaset books 2022, is a wonderful poetic object. It's a simple black box containing ~99 cards (haven't counted them) + a tile and credits. Each card has an idea for 'a book of poems ...'. There are some beautiful ideas in this, here are a bunch of them.

A card saying: A book of poems written using annotations found in other books of poems.

A card saying: A book of poems called Copyright. The book is blank and comes with a pencil that has Copyright Stephen Emmerson etched onto the side of it. There is also a card explaining that the pencil should be used to write poems in the book and that all poems written as such will be held under Copyright Stephen Emmerson.

A card saying: A book of poems called Unlucky. Each page is made up of the 13th line of the 13th page of 169 books. Each page is numbered 13.

A card saying: A book of poems written through a psychic medium.

A card saying: A book of poems written by cats walking on keyboards.

A card saying:A book of poems entitled Ant Song in which a translation of Rimbaud's poem Voyelles is crawled upon by ants. A thirty minute video is taken of the process and for each thirty seconds of the video the words that the ants crawl on are transcribed thus creating a series of new poems.

A card saying: A book of poems written via a list of subscribers. An advertisement is issued asking people to sign up for one years worth of Mail Art Poems. Subscription is £12. Every month a new poem is sent. The first poem is a blank sheet of paper that has been screwed into a ball and flattened out again. A note is included asking the subscribers to reply. Once the replies have been received collated and photocopied they are sent to the other subscribers on the list as if in answer to their replies. They are in turn asked to reply and their replies are again sent to each other. This continues for the remainder of the subscription. The results are then published in an anthology.

A card saying: A book of one word poems made up of misspelt words received in text messages.

A card saying: A book of poems composed of rejection letters received after submitting this sentence as a poem to various magazines.

A card saying: A book of poems written using a Ouija board.

A card saying: A book of poems containing reviews of fictional books of poems.

A card saying: A book of poems inspired by Edward De Bono's The Dog Exercising Machine. A group of children aged between five and ten are asked to design a machine that automatically creates poems. Their drawings are gathered together and presented as a book called The Automatic Poem Machine.

A card saying: A book of poems called Instantaneous Poems. The poems are created by choosing a book and fixing it to a board which is then hung on a wall. A dart is thrown at the book. All the words that the dart passes through are written down in a line. One on top of the other. This should be repeated until there is enough material for a book.

A card saying: A book of poems called Writing not Writing in which every page contains a description of something that has distracted the writer from writing.

A card saying: A book of poems constructed entirely out of ideas for books of poems.

A card on a stack with book credits on it

A deck of cards spread out, the top one is the title card saying A Box of Ideas

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