Blackout Poetry For Everyone

In my recent blog, I mentioned that I was going to go into more detail about blackout poetry and the history of the subject. Blackout poetry is when you take a written piece of work, such as a newspaper or old book, and redact or blackout words to form a poem.

Blackout poetry seems like a fairly recent phenomenon but it has, in fact, been around since the 1700s! According to the article, “What is Blackout Poetry? A Brief History of the Form” by Sean Glatch, one of the earliest forms of blackout poetry was made by Caleb Whiteford by redacting newspaper articles and making jokes out of the words. However, the art form was lost and didn’t resurface until the Dada Movement (1915) and the Beat Poet Movement (1940). Blackout poetry didn’t become mainstream until a man named Austin Kleon published his first book of newspaper blackout poems in 2010.

Kleon’s book was not the first time I had heard of alternative forms of poetry. My love of poetry goes back to elementary school when I learned about limericks and haikus. Over the years, poetry has become an emotional outlet for me. My greatest influences have always been Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. When I was in high school, I published my first poem in the “visiting artists” section of the yearbook. I remember making blackout poetry from old issues of the local newspaper in high school English class. 

I didn’t revisit the form until my first year of teaching when I was researching fun ways to teach poetry to students. I ran across Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like an Artist and fell in love with the art form yet again. During quarantine, poetry was one of the few things that kept me sane. I took an old copy of The Giver by Lois Lowery and began practicing my blackout poetry. My intention was to take an old book that I had multiple copies of and turn it into a blackout book. But before blacking out, I needed to actually create my poetry.

How to create a blackout poem:

• Step 1: You need a printed form of media, a pencil, and a marker or paint.

• Step 2: Find your anchor words. When you read through the page, use your pencil to underline the words or phrases that appeal to you.

• Step 3: Find your filler words and underline them. These are the words that you use to string together your anchor words to create your poem.

• Step 4: Box in your words. I like to draw a box around my words in pencil first and then go over the box with a sharpie pen, making sure there is enough room around the words for mistakes.

• Step 5: Black it out. With your marker (preferably a darker color) or paint, begin to blackout all of the other words around your boxes.

Key things to remember:

• There are no rules when it comes to blackout poetry! You don’t have to rhyme and it doesn’t even have to make sense!
• It is okay to mess up!
• HAVE FUN and enjoy yourself!

Voila! You have created your poem! Are you ready to take it to the next level?

How to turn your poem into art:

• Blackout your words with different colors.
• Make designs around your boxed-in words that are relevant to your poem.
• Collage around your poem or add it to your Vision Board.
• Turn your poem into mixed media art on a canvas.

When quarantine was over and retail stores started opening up again, I went to my favorite place in Dallas, the flagship Half Price Books, to search for the perfect book to create blackout poetry. In the clearance section, I found a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with a gorgeous cover. My blackout poetry book is an ongoing project, and I made it a personal goal in my Powersheets® to finish it this year. Look for a follow-up blog in the future on my progress with Powersheets® and my personal goal-setting for the year.

I want to hear from my readers. Do you like blackout poetry? Have you ever tried to make blackout poetry? I challenge you to make your own blackout poetry and share it with us. Take a picture and upload it to our Facebook Group MMC Chat and let’s continue the conversation!

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