National Poetry Month 2018: Blackout Poetry #1

I spent several months working on a book of blackout poetry and, now that it's finally complete, I'm excited to share it with you.

If you're not familiar with it, blackout poetry (also known as Erasure) is an art form that involves crossing out (blacking out) lines of text to make a poem out of the words that remain. Anyone can do it and it's a great way to get your children interested in poetry, too.

Take a cheesy romance novel, a pile of Sharpies, a roll of duct tape, and some decoupage paper, and you get this masterpiece:

To celebrate National Poetry Month, I'm going to be sharing one poem a day from my first book of blackout poetry. Here's today's poem:

Blackout Poetry #1 a cemetary      dead do you remember?      a smile      a lovely face the last thing Over      And then...

I loved the experience so much that I've already started another collection. After seeing some of the amazing work on Pinterest, though, I think I'll need to up my game. Blackout Poetry really crosses the line between art and literature.

I hope this has inspired you to try blackout poetry yourself. You can start with a page from an old book or even yesterday's newspaper. Give it a try and don't forget to share the results!