Blackout Poetry: Creative Development

I enjoy writing poetry and making visual art with found things and thus it is a bit surprising that I only discovered blackout poetry in 2023. This type of poetry falls under the category of Found Poetry that according to poets.org takes existing texts and refashions, reorders and presents them as poems.Blackout Poetry, also referred to as Redacted Poetry is brought into the world by selecting words from a block of text, leaving them in the original position they appeared in print and striking out the rest. This is a meeting of two creative minds, a collaborative endeavour between the most likely unsuspecting author of the original text and the poet who brings to light new revelations, new meaning with the words that have been selected.It is a form of poetry along with collage poetry (something I discovered much earlier) that upon reflection is a culmination of nearly forty years working in the creative industries; first as a graphic designer/illustrator, then as a maker of collage and assemblage art and later as a writer of poetry.In July 2023 I began to explore the possibilities of blackout poetry using old National Geographic magazine text and crossing out with a black sharpie. This method produced quite messy visual results and at the beginning I also forgot to photograph the original text.

National Geographic, March 2002, p59. Blackout poetry 2023, KEW

By the time I wrote the 'Catalogue' article for a Dead Good Blog in mid-July, I had figured out a tidier method; photographing the text, inputting into the computer and blacking out using Photoshop.

Army & Navy Stores Catalogue, 1907, p.313. Blackout poetry 2023, KEW

Moving on, considering content for this current article, I began again with photographing the text and then firstly doing the Photoshop method.

Country Life, December 1993, p.58. Blackout poetry 2024, KEW

Then I thought I would experiment further with the original magazine text and add color using coloured pencils and Ohuhu markers. With this method one can see all original text leaving the selected words appearing as if a cryptic message.

Country Life, December 1993, p.58. Blackout poetry 2024, KEW

The next experiment was using color and then adding marks with a black technical pen to push back the unwanted text making it nearly illegible.

National Geographic, May 2012, p.57. Blackout poetry 2024, KEW

Country Life, April 1994, p.76. Blackout poetry 2024, KEW

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Thankyou for reading, Kate JSources
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