I’ve known about blackout poetry for a few years, but for some reason I never got around to trying it.
When I first considered it for the form of the month I thought it would be really easy, maybe even a little fun. Basically, to do a blackout poem you take a page of prose, pick out a few key words, and then black everything else out.
With the holiday season closing in fast, I decided to use a page from one of my favourite Christmas stories, the Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry. I actually started out with two pages. The first page I used a yellow highlighter to highlight words that caught my eye. Then I reversed it on the second page, blacking out everything but the words I highlighted on the first page. And this is what I came up with:
It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, especially the blacking out part. I went through seven copies before I got it right. LOL
Meanwhile, here’s another couple of examples of what you can do with blackout poetry:
For more examples and a better explanation, check these links:
Power Poetry - 5 Tips For Creating Blackout Poetry
Medium - Creative Deconstruction For Writers: How to Write a Blackout Poem
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