Blackout Poetry

What is it exactly? I didn't know until I gave it a go with fellow contributors last night at one of our "wild" dinner gatherings. This phenomenon all started with a man, a newpaper and a marker. Meet Austin Kleon, the man behind blackout poetry and the creative process. To find out more about his story, click here. I can definitely see the appeal of creating blackout poetry since all you need is some written text, a marker and the ability to read. Simple enough it seems (I was wrong). The process basically involved highlighting words and blacking out the rest on the page.

Armed with markers and pages from old books, here are some of our humble attempts. In retrospect, it seemed the more you blacked out, the better the poem. However, in our case, new stories emerged from the blackout. Pre-reading also would have helped.

Somehow pages from romance books fell into our hands and a theme began developing.

Note: Some content may offend.

Expand/Hide