How to Write Blackout Poetry
On your way to a new work in 4 simple steps
“Your unconscious mind is as influential in this process as your conscious mind. Above all else, blackout poetry is another adventurous way to explore the themes currently influencing your inner world.”
Who knew coloring could still be so hard?
I had wanted to try blackout poetry for years. But I never had any type of text I’d never want to read again for raw material…until I found an old college literary review lying around my bookshelves.
This was my process:
- Choose media that you don’t mind reading again
- Choose an “eraser” I used a thin sharpie (for outlining words) & a thick sharpie (for fully covering unwanted words)
- Choose a page and rip it out for ease. I chose pages by looking for words that sparked an idea at a glance, but not necessarily a whole poem
- Outline words appearing in your poem with a thinner utensil (to block them out so you don’t cover them by accident)
- Color around the poem, being careful to look out for words you want to add or throw out
I thought I’d maybe get 5–10 poems out of the scholarly articles, poetry, and prose the short and small book offered. I got 34.
I sat down and could produce poem after poem. I was prolific. It was terrific. It was almost as if they wrote themselves, at the risk of waxing poetic (well, I’ll take the risk, because that’s what you’re here for, after all).
The words were already there, I just had to detach them from their role in the story they were already a part of.
Sometimes I decided to read the text. Sometimes I just looked for the prettiest words. As I went along, I got used to seeing connections between the best words (words liked “collapsed” and “agency”) and connecting them into a phrase. I became more skilled at seeing the page of text as abstract.
Treasures
I was stunned to be able to make poetry that I thought was good out of almost every page I handpicked. There’s something cathartic about erasing with color, about deliberately taking away the distractions. The only exasperating part of this process is when I covered over words that I wanted so badly to be in my poem. As you know, poetry is concise, and every word counts.
There were treasures in reading them aloud, so I encourage you to do the same with your blackout poetry. Things you didn’t even know you’d done well until you hear it outside your mind. The black space between the words places a pause, changes the pace. Sometimes this was exactly what I wanted. I especially loved when the existing punctuation helped extend the new message I was mapping onto the existing one.
One of the hardest parts about being creative is liking what you create — or rather, dealing with feelings about not liking what you create.
With blackout poetry, you have options, but they don’t go to infinity. It’s comforting in that way. I hope that if you try out this poetry method, you find the same comfort and fulfillment.
