Blackout poetry is defined by Poets.org as a “form of found poetry wherein the poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains.” The style is often interchangeably referred to as erasure poetry or redacted poetry, although subtle distinctions exist between these.
The exact moment escapes me, but I first encountered blackout poetry in one of my English classes as an undergrad. The form found its way back to my mind when I read the work of Kate Baer, a now NYT Bestselling poet, who uses the misogynistic Instagram DMs she receives as a canvas for her blackout poems. I’d highly recommend checking it out.
I’ve always compared writing to completing a puzzle. After some preparation, a person has all the pieces in their mind. The hard part is putting them together logically. Giving blackout poetry a try myself, I’ve found that my philosophy towards writing is true here more than ever. Starting with an already completed work, the pieces of the puzzle are clearly laid out in front of you. It can feel nice to not have to start from scratch when you’ve been struggling creatively. At the same time, however, it can feel restrictive not being able to insert many of your own words. The hard part becomes erasing text in a way that reads logically. It’s turns into a lot of trial and error, but the process feels like you’re stretching a part of your brain that you’ve been neglecting. Blackout poetry is a gamification of writing that leaves me in a better creative headspace to write work from scratch.
Using an article from The Guardian, I wrote a blackout poem for a writing group a while back. Our theme was “technology.” Below it, I’ve inserted my work for you to check out. Enjoy!
Space Debris: A Blackout Poem
The robotic arm struck seven astronauts
When it classified humans
Aboard the international space station
As junk circling earth.
Traveling at over 17,500 miles per hour,
It went through some insulation and hit the astronauts.
Small pieces of debris
Are currently in lower Earth orbit.
According to NASA, their millimeter-sized spacecrafts
Have hypervelocity impact protection,
But the shields are only truly effective
Against smaller objects.
It’s estimated that between 1 centimeter and 10 centimeters
There’s about 990,000 objects,
And from 1 millimeter to 10 centimeters
There could be upwards of 120 million.
Human spaceflight from US soil has halted,
with Russia, India, China, and the European
Space Agency possessing their own recent agreement.
Space debris: the more stuff you put up there the bigger the problem becomes.
I have seen this style of poetry in the past, but did not know there was a whole genre behind it. Very interesting. Also, this poem about space debris heightens my anxiety about pollution…