Poetry
Creating a Blackout Poetry Art Show
How I Wrote 22 Giant Blackout Poems in 3 Weeks
“Every new idea is just a mashup or remix of one or more previous ideas.” — Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist
A few years ago, I started experimenting with blackout poetry. Blackout poetry, sometimes called “erasure” poetry, is where the writer uses an existing text and “blacks out” or “erases” words on the page in order to create a new poem. The words that remain after the erasure form the poem.
How to Make a Blackout Poem
1. Choose a text
2. Black out or erase words
3. What remains is a poem
Blackout poetry is a type of Found Poetry. Found poetry is an umbrella term encompassing any poem that uses an outside source text to create a new poem. That text is generally previously published material, although simply using this definition doesn’t exactly hit the nail on the head, as non-literary texts also work well for found poems. (Examples include manuals, informational packets, advertisements, and other texts not meant to be defined as literature.)
