When I was asked by Austin Woman Magazine “What is the biggest impact of social media on your life?” it didn’t take but a second for me to reply that it was all the new and interesting people I would never have met otherwise. Some have been on the opposite side of the globe from me, and some have been right around the corner.

Austin Kleon is one of those. He is a writer and cartoonist who lives here in Austin, TX, that I met when I saw another acquaintance Tim Walker talking to him at that giant cocktail party known as Twitter. I was intrigued by a tweet about a newspaper blackout poem which is described as “Newspaper + Sharpie = Poems.” By blacking out all but select words in a newspaper article, Austin creates poetry. He has quite a collection of them on his blog that I could pass hours reading. He also recently posted this cool time-lapsed video showing the making of a blackout poem.

While it took Twitter to introduce me to this cool poet and artist in my own backyard, ye old mainstream media is introducing him to a global audience. He was recently featured in the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia:

A collection of Austin’s Newspaper Blackout Poems is forthcoming from HarperCollins in February 2010. I encourage you to check him out! You can follow him on Twitter, read his blog and become a fan on Facebook.