Blackout Poetry: Mastering the Technique of Erasure Poems

1. Intro: Today, we're going to be talking about blackout poetry. Blackout poetry allows writers to create new meaning from existing literary works. It's a creative, sustainable, accessible way to approach poetry. Hi. My name is Nicole May and I'm a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist based in Treaty for Canada. At the center of all my artistic practices is poetry. Everything I do comes back to poetry. It's led me to having my own books published, several magazine features, and having poem art exhibits. For the past several years now, I've also been teaching poetry. I do workshops and classes such as this. This specific Blackout poetry class will benefit you if you're someone who wants to improve their poetry skills is currently experiencing writer's block. If you're someone who likes crafting and creative exercises, or even if you're just seeking to mix up your writing routine. Together, we'll be exploring the history of Blackout poetry, how to get started on your poem, the hurdles to watch out for with Blackout poetry, going above and beyond, and how you can blossom in the Blackout poetry community. There will also be a class project where you can submit your own blackout poem for me to provide feedback on. Putting your learnings into practice will not only enhance creativity, but it'll open your mind to more experimental ways of writing. With all this said, let's get into our first lesson. 2. The History of Blackout Poetry: Our first lesson, let's discuss what blackout poetry is and how it came to be. Blackout poetry is the process of taking a preexisting text and blacking out words to create your own poem from it. It's considered found poetry because you're finding the poem within. Now, the earliest examples of found poetry came from the 1700s. It was predominantly satirists and humor writers that would deface newspapers to create puns and short jokes. This being said, Blackout poetry only gained public interest in 2010. This was because author Austin Cleon published a book called newspaper Blackout, where he explained and showed examples of his Blackout poems. It also coincided with a Blackout poetry tumbler blog that was rapidly growing in audience. It was really the Internet and online communities that got Blackout poetry popular. Oftentimes, you'll find that the subject matter of these poems are linked to our politics, various activism movements, and modern day relationships. One of the things I love about Blackout poetry is that there's still a lot of room to grow it. Something that's new can have a lot of big opportunities. Given all this context, let's discuss how to start your own Blackout poem. 3. How to Get Started on Your Blackout Poem: That we know the history of Blackout poetry, let's talk about how to make your own. The supplies you'll need are a pencil, a sharpie, and a piece of written text that you don't mind destroying. This could be a newspaper, a magazine, or an old book. To begin, you'll want to scan through the initial one third of your chosen page. Find a word that stands out and inspires you. You should circle it with your pencil so you don't lose it on the page. Once that's done, see if you can start piecing together a sentence with that word. Can take quite a while to do this. So make sure to be patient with yourself. Once you start forming your sentence, you'll get a good sense of what the subject matter of your Blackout poem will be. It's important to note that Blackout poetry will reveal itself to you. It's very difficult to go into this with an intention or an expectation as to what you're going to write about. Instead, you need to look at your page as if there's a hidden poem on it. Now that you know how to make a blackout poem, let's talk about some of the hurdles you may encounter. 4. The Hurdles of Blackout Poetry: There are many ways in which Blackout poetry can be challenging. Just like haikus, Blackout poetry has specific limitations. A haiku has a total of 17 syllables with the first line having five, the second line having seven, and the last having five again. With Blackout poetry, you can only use the vocabulary given to you on one singular page. The truth is, you're going to come across a lot of texts that are very unpoetic and can't really work for Blackout poetry. Unfortunately, it's very common to spend a lot of time on a blackout poem that leads nowhere or has a bunch of missing words. I know for myself, there's been plenty of times where my blackout poem feels almost complete, but I'm missing one singular word like. You'll also want to be mindful of accidental plagiarism. You can't keep complete sentences or paragraphs of written text because then you're not technically creating your own narrative, you're just singling out what someone else wrote. All this to say, you'll end up making a lot of bad blackout poetry. I know I have. It's really important to not let that discourage you though. Have fun making messy and incomplete poems. The more times you do, the more often you'll come away with blackout poems that you love that are beautiful and magnificent and feel totally worth it. Now that you know what hurdles to expect, let's talk about how to go above and beyond with your blackout poems. 5. Elevating You Blackout Poem: Let's discuss elevating your blackout poetry. Some people like to make Zens or narrative stories with Blackout poetry. Now, as you learned in the last lesson, it can be quite difficult to choose the subject matter of your Blackout poem. With these Zens and narrative stories, you want every page to be connected to each other. Every subsequent poem should carry through the story. Therefore, the best tip I can give you in doing this is to create Blackout poetry from a short story collection. Short story books are filled with all kinds of authors and writing styles, but often have a central theme. Using these collections to create a blackout poetry zen or narrative story also helps to prevent plagiarism and promote creativity. Speaking of creativity, another way you can go above and beyond with your blackout poem is by adding a visual to it. Here are some examples of what other people have done. They've not only made a blackout poem, but did blackout art as well. Now, if you're interested in doing this, my tip to you is to circle your poem with that pencil, as I initially said, but then draw an image around the circled words with a pencil as well. You'll want to make sure that you're doing two lines for your image because just like the words, you're going to blackout what's around it. Basically, do with the art what you did with the poem. These two methods, both making a Blackout poetry story, as well as Blackout poetry art are really great ways to go above and beyond. But it's just important to note that they're not necessary. If you'd rather keep it simple and classy, that's totally fine. I myself love to just do the regular version of Blackout poetry too. With all this in mind, the structure in creating a Blackout poem, the hurdles of it, and how to take it above and beyond. Let's get into our class project. 6. Class Project: Now that you know the ins and outs of blackout poetry, it's time to submit your own to the project gallery. Just as a reminder, make sure you have your pencil, Sharpie, and page of text to create from. Start your blackout poem by finding the central theme in the first one third of your page, and do your best to find the hidden poem instead of forcing your own narrative. If you're needing any help, you can refer back to the previous lessons or look up examples of other people's blackout poetry to get inspired. Once your poem is complete, make sure to submit it to the project gallery where I'll be checking over all of them and giving feedback. I look forward to seeing what you create 7. Blossoming in the Blackout Poetry Community: You for submitting a blackout poem to the project gallery. If you've been enjoying this writing practice so far, you may be wondering, what can I do with these blackout poems? Well, for starters, art and literary magazines love Blackout poetry. They're really effective at breaking things up visually, especially when you have a magazine that has a bunch of poems of the same font and length over and over again. Another place you can put your Blackout poetry is within a manuscript. If you're interested in publishing your own poetry book, you can include these in that. Here's an example of a really beautiful poetry book that's integrated Blackout poems in it. The last place I can recommend that you put your Blackout poems refers way back to our first lesson online. There is a huge Blackout poetry community on Tumbler and Instagram and various other social media platforms. All you have to do is search Blackout poetry as a tag, and they will come up. Use social media as a blog and try befriending the writers you admire. Guess what? That's everything you need to know about Blackout poetry. I'm going to summarize it in our final lesson. 8. Closing Notes: Congratulations on finishing this class. Now that we're at the end, you should know the history of Blackout poetry, how to create your own the hurdles of Blackout poetry, and how you can take it above and beyond, as well as how to blossom in the Blackout poetry community. I hope you feel both creatively engaged and encouraged to continue Blackout poetry. If you haven't already, make sure to submit your own Blackout poem to the project gallery. If you want to take another poetry class from me, you can check out my Skillshare profile, and if you want to stay connected with me and my projects, you can go to my website which is www.peachples.com. My portfolio and social media are there as well. Thank you for taking this class and I will talk to you later. Bye. Oh