Fun With Blackout Poems
As a writer, I am constantly looking for ideas and inspiration. So naturally, I was excited when I came across this poetry pearl of an idea when checking Twitter last evening. It comes from Austin Kleon, http://www.austinkleon.com/newspaperblackout/ an Austin , Texas based artist and writer. Austin calls this method for composing poetry ‘Blackout Poetry.’ He uses newspaper pages to redact the original text with permanent markers to eliminate words not required, thus leaving only those words essential for creating the desired message. Austin encourages fellow poets to dive right in and try blacking out and then sharing the resultant poems on his web site. This strategy works in a similar fashion to ‘found poems’ and ‘river poems’ in so much as it brings old pages back to life by using the words in an enterprising and creative way. I can imagine Blackout poems working really well with the student writers I meet, as it allows them full control over the co