Blackout Poetry
Author: Julianna Cooper, Challenge America Program Coordinator
I think many of us would agree that art is all around us - inspiration waiting in the breeze, a flower you spot on a walk, the bridge of a song playing in the grocery store.
How about reading the newspaper, or cracking open a new book? You might think inspiration might only be found in a theoretical sense, but how about more literally - a poem all its own, just waiting on the page to be found? 📚
In honor of April being National Poetry Month, I wanted to highlight one of my own favorite methods of writing poetry - Blackout Poetry! ✏️
Blackout poetry - also sometimes referred to as redacted poetry or erasure - is a type of “found poetry,” which is using pre-existing (“found”) text to create something completely new and unique. Portions of the original text, whether entire sentences or singular words or letters, are kept, while the rest of the page is crossed or blacked out to create a fresh Canva #1s around the newly created prose.
We’ve included a few striking examples of blackout poetry below:
That first book - Austin Kleon
Blue Valley - Sugar
Instructions
So: are you ready to create your own blackout poem? The process is simple.
Identify the text you want to use. Examples of text sources could be newspaper articles, journals, magazines, books - anything with text!
Read the page and find meaningful words, ideas, or phrases
Mark or cross out the text you want to exclude from your poem - you can “black out” the text with lines, blocks, using paint, even drawing!
And that’s all! Your blackout poem is complete.
