Blackout poetry is a form of poetry that involves taking a written piece of text, such as a book, newspaper, or magazine, and redacting words to create a new poem. The resulting poem is created by selecting and arranging the words that are left. Blackout poetry is also known as erasure poetry, redacted poetry, and found poetry.
To create a blackout poem, you can follow these steps:
- Find a written piece of text that you feel comfortable altering.
- Skim the passage and look for an eye-catching word that will guide the theme of your poem.
- Read the poem in its entirety and circle words or short phrases that might relate to your eye-catching word or phrase.
- Make your final decisions and black out the rest of the poem using a marker or digital tools.
- Write out your final poem to display next to your blackout poetry.
Blackout poetry is a great way to experiment with poetry and expand your writing toolkit. It is also a fun exercise for those struggling with writers block. Blackout poetry can be made up of single words or phrases, and they can be read like a story. You can create blackout poetry digitally using text on a Google Slide or a Canva project.
Examples of blackout poetry can be found online, and there are many resources available for teachers who want to incorporate blackout poetry into their lessons.
