Creative Destruction

"There are poemsinside of youthat paper can’t handle."

Live Now - Blackout Poem by Kevin Harrell (see more at www.blackoutpoetry.net)

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Cold Heart - Blackout Poem by Kevin Harrell

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Star-crossed Lovers - Blackout Poem by Kevin Harrell

Stoned on Life - Blackout Poem by Kevin Harrell

"The sender of a message can never fully know his recipient’s mental code book…. Every poem is a message, different for every reader."

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"Why erase the works of other writers? The philosophical answer is that poets, as Wordsworth defines them, are “affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present.” The more practical answer: compared to writing, erasing feels easy. But I am here to convince you: to erase is to write, style is the consequence of the writer’s omissions, and the writer is always plural. To erase is to leave something else behind."

Newspaper Blackout: Tips for making a blackout poem

The Kansas City Star is running a blackout poetry contest and wrote up some good

tips for making your own poems, many of them from Newspaper Blackout. I thought

I’d share some of them here, along with my own notes. New poems coming

tomorrow! —AK

Use the newspaper. It’s cheap, they make a new one every day, there’s a huge

variety of material in a single paper, and people won’t whine or scold you for

“ruining” a book.

Loosen up. When you’re in blackout poetry mode, don’t read the articles as you

normally would. Look at the words as raw material. Toggle between part of one

article and part of another, looking for words (and images they suggest) that you

can turn into something completely different from the topics of the stories. You’re

making fiction out of nonfiction.

Set a time limit. (I usually do them on my lunch break or bus ride.)

Some articles won’t inspire you. Move on.

Don’t read the article first. “I like to think of blackout poems like those old ‘Word

Find’ and ‘Word Search’ puzzles we used to do in elementary school — a field of

letters with hidden messages to find,” Kleon writes.

Remember that the poem will be read from left to right and top to bottom.

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Share them. You can submit your poems here.

Read more tips online or in Newspaper Blackout→

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