Writing Prompt
Pier 21 Prompts
Fifth Prompt: Erasure Poetry
The lines are already there, what do you see?
“Erasure” or “blackout” poems are created out of an existing text. The words are already there — your challenge is to select what to keep and what to cross out. I’ve seen just a few of these poems on Medium, for example, “Algebra” which John Newmark crafted from an excerpt of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
The first time I ever wrote an erasure poem was in a creative writing course in high school. I unfortunately couldn’t track it down, but I remember how incredibly satisfying it was to release some teenage angst by aggressively crossing out lines of text on paper. You can do this digitally, of course, using the black highlighter on Word. It might be tricky to release pent-up feelings that way, though…
Unfortunately, the black highlighter is not a feature on Medium, so I recommend doing what John did:
1) Copy your chosen text into Word, Google Docs, etc.
2) Work away to chisel the text — much like a sculpture — until you find your new poem.
3) Take a screenshot or photo of your poem. Try making your font size smaller and the lines single-spaced to get it all to fit on one page.
4) Type out your poem. This is useful so you can change punctuation or adjusting something to…
