Newspaper Blackout Poems: A Creative Way To Write Poetry

Just yesterday when I stopped at the corner store to grab a soda, I saw the guy behind the counter reading a newspaper. I haven’t seen anyone read a paper black and white old-fashioned newspaper in at least six months, or maybe longer. I stopped for a moment and just stared at him. I didn’t even realize that people still buy newspapers since I hardly ever see those little stands on the sidewalk anymore. I don’t like to get ink on my hands, I started reading all my news online over a decade ago.

However, when I saw this Newspaper Blackout Poetry, I suddenly had the urge to buy a newspaper. This is truly a fascinating creative process, and the end result is like a reverse word search. What you do is read your newspaper, but in a different way than before. You start to notice individual words that when pieced together with other words on the page, might create an insightful poem of some sort.

As you’ll see in the video below, with a black Sharpie, you put a rectangle around the words you would like to use in your poem. It’s tricky because since you can’t move the text on a newspaper, you have to be careful that the poem reads correctly yet still uses the words in the location on the page where they already are. Once you’ve blocked out your poem, you simply black out the rest of the page with your marker.

Austin Kleon is the person who first created this process, and he’s even published a best selling book with these types of poems. You can learn more about Austin and his book at Austin Kleon. There is also a tumblr dedicated to these poems. If you’d like to submit one or browse through the poetry, just click over to Newspaper Blackout.

Via: [My Modern Met]